Countdown

My flight to the UK is on Sunday. I can't believe just how quickly it has come around. As mentioned earlier, I'll be in London for a week and then I'm heading north to Bangor in Wales for my neuro course. I was supposed to be meeting with academics while in London to discuss potential jobs, but unfortunately it doesn't look like that will happen. Either people are still away (since it's uni summer holidays over there) or they do not have any money to hire anyone right now. One person said they'd be happy to meet, but when I tried to get them to set a specific date they never got back to me. Helpful. So instead for that week in London I'll just try to work on my thesis. 

[via]

A few people have said I should just enjoy my time there and not think about writing at all. I don't think I can do that entirely however. A friend of mine will be in London for some of that time so I'll make sure to have some fun... though I'll probably enjoy myself more if I've done a fair bit of work and therefore don't have to feel guilty about getting further behind (my self-imposed schedule).

On a sort-of-related-note, here's a movie not to watch just before you travel alone overseas: Taken. I was so focused on worrying about the flights that I forgot all about the possibility of being kidnapped and forced into trafficking. However I will say I am not as stupid as the girls in the movie to tell complete strangers where they'll be staying alone. Goobers. It's a good movie though - I'm sure husband would have enjoyed it more if I didn't spend the whole time going "Oh NO! What if I get TAKEN!" 

He did say he'd come get me though, so that's nice.

Even more spit.

I haven't spoken about spit in a while and I thought it time to remedy that. In case you're new here, part of my PhD research involves collecting saliva to assess particular hormones released when people are distressed (because I stress them out - muah ha ha haaaa). In case you're not new, well sorry you're having to read about this again!

Not my actual samples, but it kinda looks like this [via].

Yesterday I finally ran the assays for the rest of my samples. I've been waiting a while for this as it's supposed to be my last study of my PhD. Unfortunately it's taken over a year to get to this point, as for some reason watching a distressing film and spitting into a tube does not seem to be a popular experiment to volunteer for. In case you are very grossed out at this point, I will mention that the samples all get irradiated to kill any germs and we still wear gloves anyway. So no touching of spit actually occurs. Also to make sure I don't gross you out I definitely won't talk about all the FLOATIES in the samples...

... err anyway. Now I'm a bit nervous to actually run the statistics - what if it doesn't work? It has been my plan to finish my thesis by November 12 (AKA arrgh-no-more-scholarship-must-hand-in-dreaded-thesis-day). However if my experiment is a total dud I instead will have to run another one or two experiments, taking my PhD into mid next year. I do not particularly care for that option.

Either way I will keep you all updated since I'm sure you're all dying to know what I've found in people's spit.

P.S. Totally unrelated to this post, something quite unexpected happened - I was voted the Featured Blogger for August over at 20SB! Thank you so much to the people who voted for me, I really appreciate it. An extra special thanks goes to Little Missy Me who nominated me: you're awesome! :)

Snippets

Snip·pet (noun): A bit, scrap, or morsel

I applied for a job today. The position is to be a lecturer in biological psychology at a university in the UK. It took pretty much the whole day to write the application so now I'm exhausted. Good thoughts, prayers, crossed fingers or whatever would be appreciated! 

I don't really like my hair cut now after all. It was good for a few weeks and I received some really flattering compliments (including from you guys - aww thanks). Now it's grown to an awkward mullet-esque length and I'm stuck between deciding to cut it again and just letting it grow out. 

My home laptop has died I think. It's had a good run of about 3 years and luckily I was suspicious the end was nigh so made sure to back everything up. Hopefully I will get a new one soon - my supervisor has nicely allowed me to borrow a lab laptop for a bit so that's what I'm using currently.

Shot from last year's city 2 surf.

The City-2-Surf (a 14km run) is less than 3 weeks away and I have definitely not trained sufficiently to expect to run very much. I enjoy running and I know exercise should be a priority but it is a bit difficult when I've got so much thesis-ing to do! My friend and I have decided to walk most of it, which considering it's 14km is still pretty reasonable. Hopefully we'll still dress up as sporty zombies from the 80s!

I got to be involved in one of my favourite things - a trying on clothes montage. As I mentioned a while ago my sister is getting married next year so my mum and I went with her to give opinions on about 12 wedding dresses. Although fun and some of the dresses looked really lovely on my sister, I believe that the montages on tv/movies do not adequately portray how long and exhausting the day ends up being!

Disturbing fact: foot spas at pedicure places have lots (and lots) of feet cells of previous users clogged in the jets. That certainly does not make me want a pedicure anymore, or help my foot phobia one bit.

Ahh this is so comfortable soaking in other people's feety grossness [via].

My most recent baking disaster the other day saw me ruin yet another pot attempting to make custard. It was burnt so badly we've had to throw it away. That makes three now... oops. In a recent baking success however I made banana bread muffins which were awesome. Husband and I agreed it was the best thing I've ever baked (which perhaps considering the baking disasters doesn't say much). 

I got a 'revise and resubmit' from a journal for one of my papers. That's much better than a rejection so hopefully they'll accept the revisions!

OK that's probably enough snippets for now. Sorry for a not overly coherent post but... eh.

Booked.

Plane tickets and accommodation for my trip to the UK have been sorted! I'll be in London for about a week, and then heading up to Bangor in Wales for my neuroanatomy course. I'm supposed to be organising to meet with academics from different universities for while I'm in London, however it has been quite difficult to pin people down to agree to meet with me. It is a bit hard to get a job if I can't actually talk to anyone! I still have several weeks to go though so hopefully it will get sorted. If not I will have a fair bit of time on my hands in London. Unfortunately I will probably be a bit boring and use the time to work on writing my thesis. At least I've been to London twice before so I've seen many of the attractions already. Also from what the travel agent told me yesterday, even though the olympics will be over by the time I get there a lot of the visitors will still be around so the city will still be super packed. All the more reason to avoid the really popular places! I'm sure I'll find some cool places to write though, and definitely do not plan to be cooped up in the hotel the whole time.

While I do mean to mostly write while there, the place I've booked to stay at is right near the British Museum which I haven't visited before, and I am considering one of those big day tours (if they're not all booked out).There's one that goes to the Cotswolds which looks pretty amazing.

[from here]

Then of course there's the train trip up to Bangor (which is pretty northern) so I'll get a good chance to see the countryside then as well. I'm also very nerdishly excited about the neuroanatomy stuff too. 

So here I am again, thinking of the UK instead of focusing on my thesis... oops.

Quirk.

I am afraid of feet. Thankfully it's winter here so feet are covered generally and I don't have to see or think about feet much at the moment, but seriously they freak me out. Generally I think most people's feet are pretty unattractive (no offence), but that's not what bothers me. What I really can't stand is having people's bare feet touch my skin. It actually happens more than you'd probably realise (if feet don't bother you) - under the table when eating, people sitting closely on the lounge or on the floor - it's creeping me out just thinking about it!

AAARGH they're coming right for us!!!! [via]

As someone who studies psychology, obviously I've considered that perhaps I had some sort of foot-related traumatic incident in childhood that haunts me to this day. The thing is, I really have no recollection of such an event. Maybe Freud was right and repression is real, and I'm just that good at making sure this foot memory never comes to the surface... NEVER! 

I also can not endure shoe sharing. The reason I bring this up is that yesterday my sister nicely lent my mother some of her slippers to wear since it was cold, but it really freaked me out. Other people were very shocked and confused at my reaction that I would refuse to give my poor mother some slippers to borrow if she were cold. Sorry Mum but knowing our feet skin cells would be interacting makes me want to vomit. 

Baby feet: allowed.

The problem with telling people is, they then seem to think it's highly amusing to go out of their way to TOUCH ME WITH THEIR FEET. Boy feet are definitely worse, and they are the feet that have been shoved in my face. The thing is though, if someone says they are scared of spiders, do you rush out and find a spider to dangle in their face? I hope not. So what gives? Perhaps the difference is that a spider phobia is really quite reasonable, since well the spider could bite you and you could die (or at least experience some pain). The consequence of people's feet touching me is... tinea or something I guess. Yeah I realise this is a stupid thing to be afraid of.

Ahem. Anyway, sorry about that crazy rant. I will say that for some reason I can tolerate baby human feet (not sure why) and I've forced myself to become accustomed to Husband's feet - though this has definitely not generalised to other people (even his identical twin who genetically has the same feet). 

Do you have any quirks like this that people love to tease you about? Would you try to touch me with your feet if you were to see me in person?