Gillie the legend

Had a great time on Saturday watching the Aussies convincingly beat the Sri Lankans to once again be the champions of the Cricket World Cup. I had no trouble waking up early on Saturday thanks to a crazy neighbour who was up at 5.30 am making a racket and playing music loud enough to wake me. Grrr.

Anyway I made it to the venue, a pub near Harvard square around 9.15 am, ready for the 9.30 start. When I rocked up I was dismayed to learn that rain had delayed play and it was looking shady as to whether the game would be played at all. There were a handful of Aussies sitting around chatting who I didn't know so I grabbed a seat alone, watched the rain fall on the big screen and boringly waited. Bay-buddy soon rocked up, so taking advantage of time to kill, we grabbed a coffee and breakfast.

The room showing the cricket in the pub started to fill pretty quickly and soon enough all you could hear were Aussie accents, and the few American accents suddenly seemed foreign. It was a bit weird. Bay-buddy and I soon started chatting to a young married couple who had driven a few hours from Vermont to watch the cricket. The guy was from Melbourne and worked in finance while his wife was an American nurse. They were pretty friendly and we got along quickly. The bloke started getting stuck into the beers pretty early on and by the end of the day he was well and truly smashed and raucous, much to the embarrassment of his wife who tried to keep him tow. Having little success at subduing her husband she decided the only way to deal with the situation was to be drunk (pissed in Aussie-speak) herself. She was "battling beer with wine" in her words. Thankfully they weren't planning on driving anywhere that night and were staying in Boston for the night.

Everyone in the room was nervous of the game not starting, but when we finally saw the covers come off the pitch there was a huge cheer, even though the match was being shortened to 38 overs. Before the game I was telling Bay-buddy how much I wanted to see Gilchrist smash a hundred since his batting had been sketchy throughout the tournament. I was bloody ecstatic as we watched Gillie slog 149 in quick time and with the beer flowing, I was having a bloody awesome time. There was a significant Indian contingent in the crowd, my Bay-buddy being one of them, who were barracking for the Sri Lankans and I enjoyed sticking it to Bay-buddy everytime Gillie smashed a 6 or sent the ball flying into the boundary.

By this time, the room was packed to the rafters and it felt like it could have been any pub in Australia. Put on some cricket, supply some beer and it's amazing how the Aussies came out of the Boston wood-work.

Even though I was going (rooting in US-speak, root means to have a shag in Aussie-speak) for Australia I wanted to see a good tussle between the two teams and with Jayasuria taking it to the Aussie bowlers it looked like the Sri Lankans were in with a slim chance of running down the massive Aussie total. It was not to be however and the game ended somewhat anti-climatically after a bizarro stuff up of ending play early due to bad light and declaring Australia the champions, only to change the declaration and forcing play of the remaining overs so the Australians could win (again).

Boonie would definitely approve of the Aussie win, as long as he had a slab of VB to celebrate with of course

So 6 hours after arriving at the pub, with a satisfying outcome and a few tasty ales later, I stumbled out of the pub with Bay-buddy and a few other American work colleagues who came to check out this strange sport called 'cricket'. We tried to explain the rules to them without much success, even when we related everything back to baseball, but nonetheless they seemed to enjoy the game atmosphere and were amused at all the drunk Aussies:

Me: "If the bowlers 'pitch' the ball and the 'hitter' hits the ball to the boundary, it's like a home-run worth four points. Get it?"
Americans: *blank stare* " Why are there two people holding bats again?"
Me: *leaves to get another beer*

Oh yeah, mercifully, no-one did the 3 x Aussie/3 x Oi barrack over the entire day.

Aussies FTW!

Tomorrow 9.30 am Boston time is the Cricket World Cup final between Australia and those dodgy Sri Lankans *cough*Murali*cough*chucker.

Saturday 9.30 am is mighty early for a late-riser like me, nonetheless, being the loyal Aussie I'm heading off to Tommy Doyle's, an Irish/semi-Aussie pub near Harvard square to watch the game. Bay-buddy and another work colleague invited me which was nice of them and I also know that a significant contingent of Aussie postdocs will be there (of course).

Having no TV, I haven't really been following the cricket very intensely, and although I'm confident the Aussies will win, I'd like to see a hotly contested final tomorrow. The only question I have is, when will the drinking begin?

Go Aussies. Ponting's men FTW!

Working at lunch

A significant mile-stone was achieved in the settling-in process at work today, I was asked to join a group for lunch. Even though I've been in my new lab for almost a month now, I still feel like the new guy and am still in the process of feeling like 'one of the lab'. Everyone has been very helpful and friendly since I arrived, and my bay-buddy (the guy who works on the bench behind me in what forms a ' lab bay') even volunteered to drive me to Target to buy stuff for my flat (as mentioned in the Kung Pao chicken post), so I've definitely made inroads into being accepted into the lab, but being asked out for lunch had so far eluded me.

I've been asked out for coffee, tea and even ice-cream, and only today had I finally been asked to lunch. Success came with the smell of a beef burrito with jalopenos. It was huge, tasty and shamefully calorific. Yum.

Usually the same handful of friends, out of the lab of 20 something people, hang out at lunch together and it's not uncommon for people to eat alone due to busy experimental days. My usual lunch-buddy is Bing who is working in a lab downstairs to mine which is an ideal situation for scheduling lunch, and we have a selection of eateries on our lunch rotation menu. From burrito places which are really good here and would go really well in Australia where they are basically non-existent, to a Cajun chicken place that has a lunch serving of yummy chicken with rice and veges that is easily enough for the two of us, to a very tasty $2.75 clam chowder soup in our buildings cafeteria.

Apart from the social fitting-in process, my actual scientific work is still in its infancy. I've done a few experiments, but am still figuring out where reagents/equipment are and basically how the lab runs. My boss is a little scary as in my first two group meetings she was yelling at another postdoc for not having any results and basically not having a clue about his experimental methodology. From what I gather he kinda deserved it but I felt really sorry for him, especially since I get the feeling that not many people in the lab like him too much. To be blasted by your boss two weeks in a row seemed a bit much. I have a little expertise in what he was trying to do so I gave him some tips after the second yelling/meeting which he seemed grateful for.

Bay-buddy told me that my honeymoon period in the lab was coming to an end and that I should be wary with The Boss from now. He was only half-joking so now I'm scared of what kind of lab I've gotten myself into. My question is why the hell none of the postdocs mentioned The Boss's scariness when I visited the lab for my interview?! Hopefully I can get enough results to stay in her good books. We'll see.

After dinner tonight Bing told me he has already planned tomorrows lunch. It's a place a work-mate showed him the other day that does a mega steak and cheese sandwich that can easily feed two. Time to loosen that belt.

Reality is a state of mind

Another b'day shout out, today (Sydney time, April 25) is my elder and only brother's birthday. I don't want family reading this blog so he won't be reading this but what the hell, Happy Birthady Big Brother. It's also Anzac day in Australia, a public holiday to commemorate Aussie Diggers who tragically died in WWI and Gallipoli in particular.

For the first time since I arrived in Boston about a month ago, I called home (I did send a few emails though) to say Hi to Mum, wish Brother happy birthday and to give an update on what's been happening in Boston. Brother seemed pretty happy that I called and we had a good laugh over the phone. Although Brother is a year older than me he's still living at home and is unemployed. This is due to him being mentally ill, as he suffers from 'psychosis'. Basically its the same as schizophrenia, in that he thought people were spying on him constantly, putting listening devices in the house, sending him secret messages through junk mail, TV and radio, and it got as bad as him thinking that they were controlling every facet of his life and basically the world he lived in. For a time he thought he was living in a Truman-world situation where even I was part of the conspiracy. Brother's condition is similar to the main character in A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe. It's a great film by the way and I recommend it highly.

Brother and I have always been close although less so since I moved out of home in Sydney. Still finishing his second university degree, he couldn't afford to move out and lived with my parents (that's another saga in itself). I feel guilty sometimes that I was too involved in my own messed up life at the time he was falling ill, a time frame of 3 months or so, to notice that he wasn't well. I became aware of his illness a few months after we had returned from a 6 week trip around the world, a time I'm grateful to have had with him before he got sick. We hadn't spent a lot of time together preceding that trip as I was living away and busy with my PhD, so it was a good to reconnect with him and we shared many laughs and misadventures along the way.

My sadness at Mont St-Michel as captured by Brother

During our travel it was mostly me who organized everything, but there were times when I needed the assurance and help that a big brother instinctively provides. It was Brother in the beautiful citadel of Mont Saint-Michel, France who cheered me up when for no good reason I was feeling miserable and depressed. It was Brother who miraculously located some bandages and burn cream in hot, humid Saigon, Vietnam while I lay in a air-conditioned hotel room, nursing a burn on my leg that I foolishly received from a hot motorbike exhaust. It was the same Brother who had looked out for me during our childhood, and who I looked up to as we grew up. This is now a sad memory.

Brother and me had a great time travelling, he was celebrating the end of his degree and I was getting much needed R&R from my PhD. He seemed a little quieter than usual at times but still seemed the Brother I had always known. I was wrong. Little did I know that his comments that he wasn't sleeping well during the trip would be a symptom of his developing psychosis.

Brother had always been quiet and a bit of a loner. He did have his small circle of close friends during high school but over the years he had seen them less and less, much like the case with his university friends. I'm not going to go into detail about the dreadful process of finding out that he was mentally ill since just typing this is making me tearful, but needless to say it was a massively distressing event for me and the family. The Scot, Ace, GK and Ex-flatmate have an inkling of that terribly confusing and scary day. What I will say is that seeing your own brother in basically a mental asylum is unspeakably awful.

Despite my aforementioned guilt, I take solace that he finally reached out to me to share his problems which finally led to him receiving treatment. At present he's on very strong anti-psychotic medication which has made him less irrational/paranoid but he's still not the Brother I used to know.

Despite the medication, after 15 months or so after getting treatment, Brother still denies that anything is wrong with him, insists that he doesn't suffer from psychosis, and is adamant that everything he 'experienced' was real. Now he's extremely quiet and doesn't seem to enjoy doing anything, although he is more rational than before. He spends his time watching TV, and just sitting, trying to puzzle what 'They' want him to do and what 'They' want from him, basically trying to work out what the fuck is happening to him. I'm told he'll be on medication for probably his whole life. When I think of his long-term prospects as he is now I feel a sense of despair, not just for him but for the extra burden on Mum who is obviously distressed about the whole situation, particularly because they didn't get along for many years, including the time Brother fell ill. However, I hope that gradually he'll get better and one day he'll be able to rejoin the workforce, live independently and just simply enjoy life again.

Even though you'll never read this, Happy Birthday Big Brother.