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kareinaProgress report:
Norway trip: lots of hours of “uni work”, but no progress on any uni related projects. Instead I attended many interesting talks given by my colleagues in the Marie Curie Crust to Core (Fate of Subducted Materials) research group and spent a couple of days in the field, looking at the world’s best exposures of (ultra)high-pressure metamorphic rocks. Much fun, but still I’ve not finished writing up the paper from my PhD research, and starting to worry about not having done so. I’ve long thought that Norway would be a nice place to live—all the advantages of Alaska, plus all of the advantages of Europe in one tidy package. Now that I’ve seen the metamorphic rocks in Norway’s western mountains, I also wish to do field work of my own up there. Our field trip leader, a researcher based out of the University of Oslo, told us on many occasions how wonderful this area is for field work, and how much is yet to be discovered about the high-pressure rocks in this area. Yes, I have sent him an e-mail asking if he or anyone he knows is interested in hiring a post-doc to do field work on these rocks.
I didn’t accomplish anything with Monday other than flying back to Milan (where summer’s heat is starting, but hasn’t yet reached the oppressive levels it will likely achieve later in the season). Tuesday during the day I didn’t do much in the way of work, either, other than to note that my experiment, which we couldn’t upload before I left due to a damaged piston, was, in fact, started by my boss (using a new, undamaged piston in the machine) while I was gone, and at an even higher pressure than we’ve dared hitherto. However, Tuesday evening I got inspired and started working on the talk I’ll be giving at the Marie Curie conference later this month. Unlike other conferences, I’m not meant to be reporting on my own research, but rather making a presentation on one of a list of topics. I chose the one focusing ways in which one can do interdisciplinary research, and will be presenting case-studies of people who get to use geology to identify the source mine for things like garnets in Merovingian jewellery or gold in Visigoth coins, and a person who is using Sr isotopes in wool from textile fragments to determine where the sheep were grazing. Getting absorbed in that project meant that I lost track of time, and worked till after 01:00.
Despite staying up late, I still had to get up this morning, as I was scheduled to use the microprobe both today and tomorrow. However, when I arrived my boss met me and explained that I could only use it today, as something came up and he needs it tomorrow. However, he then said that he’d freed up the time today to show me the controls for the probe, so that I would be able to use it on my own in the evenings or on the weekends when it isn’t otherwise booked. This is really, really good news—we’ve only been waiting for him to have time for that since I started here, nearly one year ago. In the mean time I’ve only been permitted to work with our microprobe operator, who is not confidant enough in his English skills to be willing to show me how to use the controls. This hasn’t been a problem, in that it is quite efficient for him to select the points for analysis, and for me to record on a photograph (separate computer) where the points are. But he won’t work after 5pm, so I’ve been limited in the time available.
Now that I’ve had the quick lesson, I’m happily working on my own this evening. 12 hours and 43 minutes uni work so far today and still counting. Good thing I’m not scheduled for the probe tomorrow—I intend to sleep in!
My schedule for late August/early September is really, really full. I already planned to attend a conference in Budapest for a week, followed by a week in Vienna for a short course, followed by a week in the Alps for the Textile forum, and today my boss tells me he wants me to submit an abstract for an Italian mineralogical society conference the three days after the textile forum! However, I don’t suppose I’ll mind being out of town—that time of the year is when Milan is closed due to everyone leaving for their holiday to avoid the oppressive heat.
In other news, I’ve pretty much finished the nålbinded slippers I was working on—just a bit of embroidery left to do. I’ll try to take photos, later. I have found that as much as I love hand-sewing, nålbinding is even more fun/better suited to doing whilst travelling, particularly when working with a thick yarn, since the stitches are so easy to see in a quick glance while my attention is focused on the lovely view out the bus or train window.
Norway trip: lots of hours of “uni work”, but no progress on any uni related projects. Instead I attended many interesting talks given by my colleagues in the Marie Curie Crust to Core (Fate of Subducted Materials) research group and spent a couple of days in the field, looking at the world’s best exposures of (ultra)high-pressure metamorphic rocks. Much fun, but still I’ve not finished writing up the paper from my PhD research, and starting to worry about not having done so. I’ve long thought that Norway would be a nice place to live—all the advantages of Alaska, plus all of the advantages of Europe in one tidy package. Now that I’ve seen the metamorphic rocks in Norway’s western mountains, I also wish to do field work of my own up there. Our field trip leader, a researcher based out of the University of Oslo, told us on many occasions how wonderful this area is for field work, and how much is yet to be discovered about the high-pressure rocks in this area. Yes, I have sent him an e-mail asking if he or anyone he knows is interested in hiring a post-doc to do field work on these rocks.
I didn’t accomplish anything with Monday other than flying back to Milan (where summer’s heat is starting, but hasn’t yet reached the oppressive levels it will likely achieve later in the season). Tuesday during the day I didn’t do much in the way of work, either, other than to note that my experiment, which we couldn’t upload before I left due to a damaged piston, was, in fact, started by my boss (using a new, undamaged piston in the machine) while I was gone, and at an even higher pressure than we’ve dared hitherto. However, Tuesday evening I got inspired and started working on the talk I’ll be giving at the Marie Curie conference later this month. Unlike other conferences, I’m not meant to be reporting on my own research, but rather making a presentation on one of a list of topics. I chose the one focusing ways in which one can do interdisciplinary research, and will be presenting case-studies of people who get to use geology to identify the source mine for things like garnets in Merovingian jewellery or gold in Visigoth coins, and a person who is using Sr isotopes in wool from textile fragments to determine where the sheep were grazing. Getting absorbed in that project meant that I lost track of time, and worked till after 01:00.
Despite staying up late, I still had to get up this morning, as I was scheduled to use the microprobe both today and tomorrow. However, when I arrived my boss met me and explained that I could only use it today, as something came up and he needs it tomorrow. However, he then said that he’d freed up the time today to show me the controls for the probe, so that I would be able to use it on my own in the evenings or on the weekends when it isn’t otherwise booked. This is really, really good news—we’ve only been waiting for him to have time for that since I started here, nearly one year ago. In the mean time I’ve only been permitted to work with our microprobe operator, who is not confidant enough in his English skills to be willing to show me how to use the controls. This hasn’t been a problem, in that it is quite efficient for him to select the points for analysis, and for me to record on a photograph (separate computer) where the points are. But he won’t work after 5pm, so I’ve been limited in the time available.
Now that I’ve had the quick lesson, I’m happily working on my own this evening. 12 hours and 43 minutes uni work so far today and still counting. Good thing I’m not scheduled for the probe tomorrow—I intend to sleep in!
My schedule for late August/early September is really, really full. I already planned to attend a conference in Budapest for a week, followed by a week in Vienna for a short course, followed by a week in the Alps for the Textile forum, and today my boss tells me he wants me to submit an abstract for an Italian mineralogical society conference the three days after the textile forum! However, I don’t suppose I’ll mind being out of town—that time of the year is when Milan is closed due to everyone leaving for their holiday to avoid the oppressive heat.
In other news, I’ve pretty much finished the nålbinded slippers I was working on—just a bit of embroidery left to do. I’ll try to take photos, later. I have found that as much as I love hand-sewing, nålbinding is even more fun/better suited to doing whilst travelling, particularly when working with a thick yarn, since the stitches are so easy to see in a quick glance while my attention is focused on the lovely view out the bus or train window.
