My rest period is done and it’s time to get some work done, off to Seattle. Some leisure time around the city, Mount Rainier, and the ASMS Conference.
Last Saturday I moved camp to Seattle and picked up my friends Nick and Claire from the airport. Dinner that evening was a very large pile of clams, mussels, shrimp and crab. They just brought whole lot out in a large bowl and dumped it on the table. We had little wooden mallets to crack open the crab. Very, very good.
On Sunday the three of us drove out to Mount Rainer (see some pictures). Well, we though that it was Mount Rainer. It was actually so cloudy at the top that we never actually saw the peak. The point closest to the summit is Paradise. The temperature was 39 F at the end of the road (compared to 46 F at the bottom) and there was at least 1.5 feet of snow on the ground. We froze our asses off and there was nothing to see. Except for the odd looking grouse like birds who were in the middle of courting while they were crossing the road.
The conference was busy as usual. Four days, close to 7,000 attendees, 650 posters a day and six concurrent oral sessions in the morning and afternoon. The Washington State Convention Center is a fine facility, but the session rooms weren’t big enough to hold everybody. Well they would have been if people actually used all the seats. I found some posters that will help my research along, whenever I actually get back to the bench.
I also talked to five PIs about potential post-doc positions. Not having any LC-MS experience or first author papers is a black mark on my CV. So I am counting on my enthusiasm and communication skills to at least make a good impression. If your project hasn’t worked and you have no first author papers, you have to explain yourself to each person to justify why things didn’t work. The appearance is that you aren’t productive when actually it may just be a case of bad luck. If all goes well I will know where I will be in a month or so. All and all it was worth my time to attend, though since i didn’t present any research I may have to foot the bill myself.
We ended the conference with a dinner at the Museum of Flight (see some http://heibeck.smugmug.com/keyword/museum+of+flight), really a fantastic place to go if you enjoy airplanes. The only other collection I’ve seen that matches it is the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. I was out to their Dulles annex a few years ago and it was amazing.
This morning at the HI Seattle Hostel I was talking to a fellow at breakfast. He was on the last leg of a world tour. He’s based out of Hong Kong and takes 3-4 weeks at a time to travel. As he entered his 40s he decided to leave work and travel the world for about 2 years. This was a change in his life perspective. Originally from South Africa, he’s lived in many parts of the world, but wanted to see more of it. He told me that one day he just looked back on his life and realized how much time had passed him by. He been in business, spending his time building a career. Finally he decided that life was just too short to be a rat race and keep matters into his own hands.
In the trip so far I am come to realize that I have not really wasted my 20s and I have sometimes thought about over my last few years in graduate school. When I talk to other people who lived it more “on the edge” or maybe did a whole raft of stupid shit they don’t regret what they have done, but many of them would not repeat the time if given the chance. I’m the same and feel comfortable with the decisions that I have made so far. But, I do want to continue to push change and experience more of the world behind me. The fellow at the hostel talked of his past with a tinge of regret, when I am 43 I don’t want that tone in my voice.
Tomorrow I fly back to Boston in the evening. I’m going to have a walk around the city one last time before I go.
