Sarcasm

I think this is now the third full week in the lab since the move was done and dusted. Just about everything now has a place, and most problems have been solved. An inevitability about working in a large group is that equipment breaks fairly quickly. So we've now found a spot in the lab for the broken equipment. And it looks like someone's been feeling a bit sarcastic about their life in academic research....

Windows

I like having windows at work again. It's so much more......agreeable.

Ooh, Shiny

My chemicals that I've been waiting for at work finally got to me on Tuesday, a mere 18 days after I ordered them thanks to the idiots in the university central purchasing office. The last three days have been lots of running around trying to get things going, which is going to end almost as soon as it begins as we start the move to the shiny new building on Monday. It was fun today to isolate a brand new compound, the third step of eight on the road to the molecules my boss wants me to make. Even though it's still a relatively unremarkable thing, it's still never been made before. It's still fun to make and discover things.

Today was essentially the last day we could work in the lab, and there's been lots of disposing of unwanted samples and junk. Despite the fact I've walked past the building site that became the new building twice a day for four years, I only got to see inside on Monday afternoon when six of us had to go and move the new lab freezer off the pallet it was delivered on. It makes a nice change to have to go upstairs into a workspace with windows. 

The building is only half-finished inside (which puzzles me since the building has been topped out for almost two years now), and there are lots of issues that we'll have to work through. Currently there's no office, and nowhere to eat our lunch. Until today there weren't even locks on the doors. There's a picture of the new lab above left. I think we're all a bit nervous about being the first one to drop something or make a really brightly coloured mess. It's nice and large, has a nice high ceiling and a view of most of the northwest of the city, and the mountains beyond. Windows! Here's a view out of the window. When I first moved into Beige Towers, I didn't think it possible to live any closer to work. Now, of course, it's about half as far. As someone remarked to me on Monday, "you could zip-line home". 

Just how long I get to work in this shiny new lab remains to be seen; on Tuesday afternoon I was invited to a job interview for a research position at a company that services the oil and gas drilling industry two weeks today. It looks - from a brief bit of resarch on the internet - to be very, very different work, but I think that's a good thing. I'm happiest when I'm learning about things, and I think that while there's always new chemistry to learn in the job I've done for the last 13 years, there hasn't been anything new in the way of techniques or processes learnt for a very long time. A change is as good as a rest, or something. And better paid as well.