The Adventure Continues...

“please hold”

I also realised that one of the things I miss in Prague is one that I missed in NZ. Multi-culturalness(ity?). Turn a street in London and you’re faced with the ‘japanese area’. Hell, turn a street in Auckland (even) and you’re in Chowick (admit it, we all call races by different names, therefore we’re all racist to some extent).

Turn a street in Prague and you’re still a ‘foreigner’ amongst an (predominantly) Ayrian race. Blue eyes and white skin gets a bit tiring when it also looks at you with blank incomprehension at why you’re here, to be quickly replaced by suspicion once you tell them you’re working for the state. (lends even more power to my ‘spy’ act previously mentioned).

Turn a street in Brazil (even in Brasilia) and you’re faced with smiley, happy people (okay, so the street cleaners aren’t exactly bursting into song at the drop of a hat, but they do smile at you when you hesitate to cross the area they’re washing, in case they get upset…) who don’t mind your weird Fritalengpanoguese (French, Italian, English, Spanish, Portuguese) that you try to speak (“bon giorno! Donde esta bus station? Le gare? Muchos obrigado!”). They don’t look at you weird when you draw diagrams on your body to demonstrate “Brazilian football strip” and fairly embrace you when you say the magic names “Ronaldinho” or “Ronaldo”.

So what was it like? Well, Brasilia was massive. Organised. One has the impression one is walking around a lego city built by a German child on Ritalin (I imagine) who was forbidden from building model aeroplanes (the city is laid out like one). Things that are currently under construction were designed in the 60’s…so you can say it’s a continuous work in progress. But so organised…this is the place where they plan which trees to put next to which buildings, then decide to build the buildings only to 4 stories high, because when the trees stop growing, they’ll be the same height.

The conference was massive: 500 people (three weasely males: 2 gay, 1 married) doing the same field training as I am supposed to be doing – from all over the world. Am trying to inveigle my way into the next outbreak of Rabies in the Amazon though, they had to use Army helicopters to transport the epidemiologists in (!!!!). People from Africa carefully pointed out which country they came from so that we learnt the difference. Bone structures were different too: the Ghanaians have really round faces, while the Kenyans and Ugandans looked more similar to the ‘typical’ African face shape. They’ve got massive problems with TB and HIV there. I’m just waiting for XDR-TB to wiggle it’s way into the world properly, and then we’re all done for folks. Oooh…fancy if it picked up a few strands of DNA from influenza. Recipe for humanocide.

They gave us a day off on their national holiday, so we had an organised tour (from whence the photos came) and then a gigantic lunch (meat, meat and just when you’re tired of it, a bit more meat: thankfully mostly beef with only one small pork leg waved at us) after which we relaxed in the pool with a friendly (read: death to those who lose!!!) game of water-volleyball. Hilarious fun (till we started losing) which gave us all pinkish shoulders and noses (both at the same time? Reflection, darlings, not just in a mirror).

On the last day of the conference, I was anyone but myself. We had lunch, went to lectures, and then lounged pool-side for the last set of lectures (STD’s, hilarious to hear talks about fisting spoken in accented English by someone trying desperately hard to keep a straight face and praying no one in the audience asks what fisting is, but you know, it was the SUN!!!) before whipping off bikini, replacing it with business casual attire, and being Marten to present his poster on something I know nothing of. People asked some difficult questions, I collected cards and e-mail addresses, and then it was the official closing ceremony where I did the stage thing accepting an award for someone else (Lisa, who won the John Snow award for the best epi-work).

Am quite jealous that she gets to work in an institute where work actually occurs and they seem to be involved in the ‘health of the nation’ instead of somewhere where they collate numbers, re-present them in a national table and call it a ‘good day’s work’. But she deserved the award. She was great. And it gave EPIET a good name too. Accepting on her behalf meant having to explain dozens of times that evening, “no, it’s not for MY talk, it’s Lisa who won…I’m glad you also liked my talk…”. Remind me not to do that again.

And then it was all over. Michelle (an Aussie) and myself headed to Sao Paulo, where we spent two half days looking for decent shoes (me) and markets (us). Sao Paulo is a big, smoggy, ugly, city. But it was interesting to be (temporarily) in a city of 19million inhabitants. Kind of crazy - the bus journey to the airport took almost an hour. It’s not got as good an infrastructure as London (I know!) for so many people (as I understand it) but since we were in the centre, we could be entirely wrong (and probably are). Anyway, if you head to Brazil, skip SP if possible and head to Rio instead. I missed it this time…

I won’t share my homicidal thoughts upon realising my seat mate (for the entire 13hour flight to Paris) was a 4 year old. I think you can probably imagine anyway (she was actually very well behaved, and had a cute button nose!). Nor my exhaustion at arriving home, and finding out that due to the temperature drop, miPod battery meter thinks it has no power, and resets its clock, causing me to get into work late every day this week so far. And since you’ve been extra special good, I’ll omit a verse from a Czech Christmas Carol. Let’s just say that I learnt “kolibati” = rock (as in ‘we will rock you’). And Doha College readers: can you believe we’re doing Dona Nobis for Christmas? Hark back to the days of wandering around the school bursting into various teachers rooms to sing for the class.

P.S. Thank you notes have so much more impact when they’re signed and not merely anonymous, don’t you think?

Moan moan moan, whinge whinge whinge.

According to my darling (misguided, misinformed, misanthropist) flatmate, it’s official. “[I] shan’t be single for very much longer.”

Now, you should know two things: I’m a scientist. He’s a philosopher. Thus – all our conversations, at some point, reach the following end-game, “but what you define as X, I define as Y, therefore, we’re actually talking about the same things”. See, definitions are very important for both philosophers (weird) and scientists (empirical).

That description was so that you’d have a little bit of an idea exactly how much eyeball rolling I had to undertake in response to his statement.

1. Define single.
Do you mean: happily able to starfish on my bed every night and sleep with the window open because I love the feeling of snuggling down into my duvet? Are you referring to my surprising capacity for the unexpected, “where are you?” “oh, at the national aquarium – it’s really good have you been?”, “er, no” without informing people of my intentions or inviting attendees. Or do you mean the whiney Nomes who comes home shattered night after night and complains she has no one to snuggle under the duvet and watch crappy Czech TV with? Or massage her shoulders – so extraordinarily tense from a day of shouldering the entire burden of global health*.

2. Define “very much longer”.
Because let’s face it, I’m sure there was a point at which the first dinosaur looked at the other and said “hmm, not much longer till the species is wiped out you know”. And once upon a time, two glaciers were communicating (well, the whales trapped within the glaciers were singing to one another across the hills – it’s how yodelling was invented) and one said “gosh, if we continue melting at this rate, I’ll be gone in not much longer". On the other hand, there’s also the moment of greenstick crisis (syringe fresh from extracting the blood from the vein of a patient with ebola, magically realigns with the padded part of your thumb, pierces all seven layers of protective clothing and draws your very own pinprick of ‘clean’ (!!!?????) blood) where if you wait “very much longer” before hammering a cleaver into your forearm, your insides will melt and pour out through your eyes. Exactly which “very much longer” do you mean?

3. Define your source.
You know, the only reason anyone ever gets your thesis out of the library is to steal the bibliography. No one reads the ACTUAL text. Occasionally, someone may flip through the pages and remark, “ooh, nice graph”, or “ha, line break in the wrong place here” but that’s it. So, when writing a bibliography, you’re fairly certain that someone, somewhere, someday, will thank you for bringing a little comic relief to their godawfully boring job (of stealing reference lists so they don’t have to conduct any actual research themselves) by inserting fake references (it’s best to fake the number of the volume, or omit one word from the journal title so that the name could now be one of 120 possible permutations of the 5 words that contain “Journal”, “of”, “and” and “epidemiology”). Besides, as someone who dabbles in statistics, ALL of them are massaged in some manner – even if only by accident. And given the rumourmill of Prague gossipmongers (apparently, there was Arborio rice at Tescos, but no…the shelves were bare!!!) I'm doubtful that the statement offered above was arrived at via communications with a reliable source.

So all in all, I’m still not miserable, but pissed off. Why? Because, as I'll patiently explain to anyone foolish enough to listen (or anyone who mistakenly considers the seat next to me on the tram as available), I’m (still) in the market for a humorous, sensitive, ambitious, kind and patient male who is smarter and taller than me, built like a cross between a whippet and a weasel, can cook, does buy wine, is musical, can solve quadratic equations in their head and has read literature.

It’s not like I asked to fly unaided to the moon, so why is it harder than nuclear physics??? And don't mention the internet. Bah humbug: Prague, Oklahoma? No you idiotic free-matchmaking non-service: Prague, Czech freaking Republic!

Even the darling flatmate pointed out, “Well Nomes, perhaps you shouldn’t be so definite when you say things**.”

Oh. Now I get it. I shouldn’t be myself, right? Should I bleach my hair while we’re at it, so as to APPEAR vulnerable***? Seems that I have to choose between frontal lobotomy, or pillows and duvet for one.

STARFISH!!!!!!!!!!!

But in light of being a self-proclaimed scientist, I shall embark on a wee project/experiment. Over the next month, I shall represent myself as a mute spy. This shall have the (apparently) more desirable effect of a) shutting me up, and b) making me appear more ‘enigmatic’ and ‘mysterious’. I shall compare the number of dates I go on in the next month with the average number of ‘dates per month’ from my entire life (to date, ha ha) and see which projection of self is more successful. Of course, in this month, I may end up biting my own tongue off …which could render me less successful in the porn movie casting-couch line “and I give great blowjobs…”****

*rumour is, I have a tendency towards the melodramatic. Rumour, people. Unsubstantiated.
**apparently, it’s offputting when I tell someone that I don’t expect that we’re going to embark on THE AFFAIR OF A LIFETIME, and that I’d simply like to hang out with them more and get to know them better. Which I don’t quite understand, because everyone bangs on about “being more honest” yet, when you are, they go, “oh, you cold hearted bitch”. WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE WANT!?!??!?!?!
***According to the Czech newspapers (yes, somehow, this counts as journalism), blondes are vulnerable, black-haired girls are exotic and scary, while brunettes are the agony aunts to whom you turn when you’re having trouble with a blonde. And according to most of my acquaintances, I’m not vulnerable. So explain the salt rings on my pillowcases please?
****Never used*****, Dad, I promise!
*****yet.