5 things I was doing 10 years ago:
1. Kicking off my PhD in Glasgow by learning l33t plasmid cloning skillz from
2. Going drinking and clubbing with students and postdocs from my institute at least once every weekend.
3. Trying to decide if I could get over the height issue and ask out this really nice guy who was about 4 inches shorter than me. (I eventually did. We went on a date which started well, but then he announced halfway through that he'd never had a girlfriend before and didn't really want one ("but if I did, it would be you"). The last hour was rather awkward).
4. Living in student accommodation with fab roommates from England, Ireland, France, and Malaysia.
5. Learning to cook meat for the first time (undergrad roomies were mostly vegetarian and we all cooked / ate together).
Me and my fab Glasgow roommates at our 1998 Christmas party5 things on my to-do list today:
1. The usual kitty stuff: wash / refill food and water bowls, treat Google's chin acne (don't ask), deal with the litter tray (aka the world's worst lucky dip).
2. Give my boss the final report from recent awesome unbloggable workshop.
3. Leave time free to deal with inevitable urgent tasks arising from my boss's recent 4 city trip. He's leaving again on Thursday...
4. Play with lab's Mac laptop to see if I like it (computer business owner friend has a used G4 that he will give me for $500, but I have to decide by tomorrow).
5. Try really really hard to find time for fun but non-urgent InaDWriMo project that keeps getting pushed back due to less fun, urgent projects (could incorporate into #4 actually. Hmm).
5 snacks I love:
1. Cheese. Any good quality cow milk cheese, or goat milk feta. But no other goat cheese. Sheep milk cheese is right out.
2. Kettle or Miss Vicky chips (honey Dijon, yoghurt and green onion, spicy Thai, salt and vinegar, black pepper and lime - love 'em all)
3. Avocado with balsamic dressing
4. Mixed roasted salted nuts
5. Oat fudge brownies from the cafe on the ground floor of my building
5 things I would do if I was a millionaire:
1. Make sure my parents and mother-in-law have enough money for a fabulous globetrotting retirement.
2. Buy my sister a house. Oh, wait, she lives in London and I'm a hypothetical millionaire, not billionaire... an apartment then.
3. Buy a sailing boat - small enough to be sailed by two people, big enough to take friends with us - and pay someone to teach me to sail it.
4. Invest enough for #5 and for our own fabulous globetrotting retirement, then give some to charity and the rest to assorted young nieces / nephews / cousins for their education.
5. Quit work and become a writer.
5 places I've lived: (chronological order - next stop was Vancouver)
1. Ashington, England (1977-1979 and 1981-1982)
2. Hameln, Germany (1979-1981)
3. York, England (1982 - 1995, plus various summers up to 2001)
4. Newcastle, England (1995 - 1998)
5. Glasgow, Scotland (1998 - 2002)
5 jobs I've had:
1. Bartender
2. Cinema usher / ticket seller and checker / popcorn shoveller
3. Employer liaison at a job centre
4. Postdoc
5. Product manager (biotech marketing)
5 (sets of) people I'll tag: (I don't tag individuals)
1. Anyone whose day included / will include kitty litter
2. Anyone whose breakfast included / will include cheese
3. Anyone who knows how to sail
4. Anyone who's ever been to any of the places I've lived (not including Vancouver)
5. Anyone who's ever worked in a bar or cinema
Yum. I love Kettle or Miss Vicky chips. My inability to stop eating them when they are in the house leads me to believe that crack is an unlisted ingredient. :)
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the litter.
he! A dubstar poster! Speak of a ghost from the past...
ReplyDeleteah, shit, I've been to Newcastle and Glasgow and I've worked in a bar. Does that mean I have to do it?
ReplyDeleteMXX, that explains everything!
ReplyDeleteThe litter was no more unpleasant than usual.
Stepwise, the poster was iconic and moved with us (me and the two girls on the left of the photo) when we moved into a non-University shared apartment for the rest of our PhDs.
HGG, see, the beauty of my tagging style is that only people who WANT to do the meme have to do it. If someone falls into one of the categories, but doesn't want to do the meme, they don't have to tell anyone that they're tagged, and I'll never know. But, now that you've told us all that you meet these criteria, yes, you will have to do the meme. ;)
I took your tag, in case no one else did!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I like the idea of including your 5 favourite rocks. I don't have any favourite rocks myself, favourite genes maybe!
ReplyDeleteCath, I also did the category tagging, and now there are three 5-Things posts out there with five favorite rocks, and where 5 categories of people are tagged! So I think the meme morphed a bit!
ReplyDeleteNice work! Maybe I'll mutate the next meme too so I can follow it through the layers of common descent with modification...
ReplyDeleteDUBSTAR!!!!!!
ReplyDelete5 favorite genes, awesome idea.
All of mine are on the same chromosome.
Hmm, in order of preference:
ReplyDeletev-Jun (got me my PhD)
beta1,3-galactosyltransferase 5 (got me 2 1st-author papers including 1 in PNAS)
SPAM1 (got me my next-best first-author paper)
DSCR4 (got me another 1st author paper, and authorships for both my former students)
DSCR8 (see above - shares a promoter with DSCR4. Actually there's a chance that neither of these two "genes" is actually a real gene, but shhh! don't tell anyone).
You went to grad school in Glasgow 5 years ago?? I finished my PhD in Glasgow approximately 5 years ago! My defense was on Nov. 6th (or 7th, I get confused), 2003.
ReplyDeleteWhat department were you in? :D
No way!
ReplyDeleteMy viva was January 18th 2002, and I was on the plane to Canada about 2 weeks later! I was at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, out on the vet school campus. I lived in the West End though - the Uni flat in the photo was at the Winton Drive postgrad accommodation complex, and after that I lived on the corner of Byres/Great West Road, and then for the last few months a bit further down GWR, past Kelvinbridge. Happy days, so many memories!
That's crazy! I was in the chem dept, and lived on Argyle street right across from Firebird. My (now) husband lived on Havelock street right off Byres Road, and we used to spend most of our time at various places along Byres Rd. Do you remember Naked Soup? I used to go there for lunch and I miss it!
ReplyDeleteDid you hear that the stuff in the little side road, with Brel and Cul-de-Sac etc., all burned down?? My husband told me it happened sometime last year...
Ashton Lane is the name you're looking for! And yeah, I heard... so sad, so many good bars, I loved Brel (except on weekends, too busy), Cul-De-Sac, Jinty's, the curry place (I want to say Ashoka but I could be wrong), the cinema, the cafe whose name I forget that did the best jacket potatoes and hot chocolate... my PI even took me to the Ubiquitous Chip once when we were entertaining a speaker (just drinks though, no dinner).
ReplyDeleteByres Road... we spent a LOT of time in Whistler's Mother, plus the Living Room, Russels (we used to go for their awesome basket of chips after walking along the river from the Botanic Gardens to Kelvingrove museum), the University Cafe, Naked Soup, Tinderbox coffee shop, plus of course Eisgebah or however it's spelt on the Woodlands Road (with the bar staff in kilts, and all the animal heads on the wall). I went to Firebird once and didn't like it as much as the others!
Fave downtown clubs/bars were Alaska and Fury Murray's, which I once called Furry Murphy's by mistake and it stuck. We went to Trash, the Velvet Rooms and the Garage quite a bit too, plus Bar Ce Lona and the Spy Bar when they opened up.
Man, I fucking loved living in Glasgow. Such happy nostalgia! Thank you!
I looove that your timeframe was the same as mine, so all those places are happy grad school nostalgia for me too! I also fucking loved living there, I would love to go back for a good visit but everyone I knew there has moved to all over the place, so it might not quite be the same. Most of my inlaw family live in London now, so I don't get to Glasgow much when I am back there.
ReplyDeleteActually, the first time I hooked up with my husband was after a departmental night out at the Garage!! Sleazy!!!
ReplyDeleteNiiiiice!
ReplyDeleteI first hooked up with the guy who would become a long-term boyfriend at, what was it called, the techno club, started with an A. We were the only two people amongst our group of friends who hated techno... Archaos? Arcane? One of the two.
Almost everyone I used to know has left Glasgow too... science sucks sometimes.