A mail to my lab.... sent around a week back

Heyy all!,

Time for the fortnightly weather update from Birmingham.... ;) Well now that I have began with it I might as well continue... the weather here is really pleasant (as in me and Chits seem to like it but the locals aren't as thrilled for some reason!), not at all humid and the rains seem to have stopped as of late... not that it rained much even when it did. I heard about the strong rains back in Mumbai and as always reporters standing in pits and commenting that the city is drowning blah blah..... but all of us being battle-hardened Indians, I can safely presume that all are safe and everyone's keeping well :)

Last Saturday we had been to Shakespeare's town... where he was born, he lived, he died (and whatever else he did inbetween... like making quotes 'What is in a name' and so on), then his mom's farmhouse and finally his girlfriend-turned-wife's place. Frankly, I don't even visit so many of my own relatives when I go to my hometown :p ... And we walked over half an hour to reach his girlfriend's place, I doubt I would bother as much for my own, if I had one ;) (interestingly her name is Anne Hathaway, one of my favorite hollywood ladies :D)

The place was no doubt very interesting... I am sure most of us would have come across the phrase "a cut above the rest" and "upper crust". Ever wondered how they originated, the phrases? Interestingly, in olden times when the ladies (so presumably Anne Hathaway in case of Shakespeare ;), made bread or other similar stuff in the house, it used to be baked in a small oven (nopes not microwave or grill ovens.... these were olden times, really old... so think of logs of wood and brick lined walls). So the bottom tended to have grit and charcoal,dirt etc which used to be in touch with the food being baked (no they didnt have microwave safe cookware for obvious reasons) and also the bottom used to turn out much harder to chew. So it was common to cut the bottom slices and give to the lesser members of the household and the cleaner, softer upper slices to the head of the house or any guest of higher standing. So the phrase basically refers to the dividing up of bread in a household where the elite got "a cut above the rest" :) Interesting, isn't it!

On Sunday, we were invited by Dr. Brain to a departmental get-together at the Head of Department's (newly announced - both the department, after re-structuring, and the HOD) place. We had booked tickets for Cadbury World for the afternoon but still decided to make it to the 'party' afterwards. The main intention obviously being to "meet people" (I am sure everyone follows ;). So we turned up at around 6PM, a couple of hours late. There were roughly 15 people left out of which, apart from us, only 3 were below the age of 30. To elaborate further - two of them were Dr. Brains kids and the third was the hosts son (who evidently was reluctantly a part of the party!). So that was that :p But yeah we did interact with several faculties, none of whom I can remember by name or face anymore (except maybe one or two).

As for the work, I am too bored to go in much detail.... except reinforce what I said last time that we are spending more time in the lab here, 'working' (important clause), than we did back in Mumbai! Trust me we are not on a vacation, so anyone greeting us when back with "Welcome from the break/vacation" will have their chocolates cut down by half! ;) But yeah jokes apart, the work is exciting and there is, might sound like a cliche, loads of new things to learn each day! From what we have discussed and planned ahead, I am sure there is enough to keep us occupied till we return and even then there would be several things we couldn't touch upon. We have certainly not forgotten about the pics, but keeping that for a bit later (dont ask me why, we just have not got down to doing it but will certainly take loads to show everyone).

Anyone read any of the papers by this guy called Hikaru Hashitani. Well this 'guy' happens to be a big-shot in the field of electrophysiology and according to Peter (the post-doc here) he is the master of sharp micro-electrode recordings and the best in the business. So the reason I brought up his name (not for random trivia), was that he happened to be in UK and Dr. Brain had taken him out for dinner one of the days. Peter was saying that the guy is known to have a sharp tongue and doesn't mince any words when commenting on anything. It felt different hearing about these 'authors' as people rather than mere names on the top of articles.

One of his papers, can't remember which one but its been widely discussed in the lab, has work on simultaneous contraction studies and electrophysiology (and in a couple of cases also imaging work). I had read through the paper before but hardly gave any thought to the experimental protocol and technique, nor imagined that it involved any level of complexity. But having had a chance to see first hand how these stuff are done, its nothing short of a miracle to obtain those kinds of recordings that he has produced in that paper (if indeed they are genuine :p - just kidding!).

Leaving the unpleasant for the last... this last week we had to endure the worst kind of racism and that too in the lab. This is how it began. Till the week before we had been using a kind of mice called C57/BL6. This week onwards we shifted to BAL B/C mice. And that's where the trouble began! For two days in a row we couldn't manage to get a single electrical recording despite trying from 10AM to 6PM! It just would not respond. And the only difference was this... the former were Black mice and these new ones were White! :p But yes we did finally get the better of them today and put them into place. Infact, we managed to get two of our most impressive recordings till date! :)

Thats all for now... this letter has turned out to be much longer than I had planned..... so till the next fortnightly update... Adios!

Cheers,
Shailesh Appukuttan

13th August, 2012 – Day 2 – Part B

It was noon by the time we got out of the University station. We were to now find our way to Wesley House, our place of accommodation for the next couple of months. Now, Wesley House was by no means a tourist spot in UK ;) and hence we certainly did not expect to find signboards at every crossing directing us to our destination but still expected, reasonably I assume, that people around (atleast some of them) could be of help. We had already gone through the map book and to its defence it was not meant to pin-point every house or urinal; I mention the latter as we were maybe a bit more in need of locating it first.

We knew that we had to move to the left of the station; the right being the way to our department/lab. We began walking, having a vague idea and I mean really vague (something like left of the University) of where we should be headed. Chitaranjan spotted a girl walking towards us. At this point I was all absorbed in finding our current position on the map and working out where we were moving, and that’s my excuse for not paying attention to approaching girls ;) He asked her where Wesley House was. She didn’t understand. I joined in with the map in my hand. The first thing I realized was that we had to talk slow, literally putting a conscious pause after each word. She obviously had not heard of the place but suggesting a few possibilities of student accommodation. She seemed quite friendly and we had a small chat. She was from Germany, had just completed her Masters and was returning soon. I obviously didn’t lose any time in telling her that my favourite footballer was German… Jurgen Klinsmann. Not that I was trying to impress the girl, but not that I would mind that, but it just felt nice talking to someone else apart from Chit (and the Goan on flight, who actually didn’t give us much scope for talking, doing our bit as well!) after over a day. Ok now the observant ones among you would say, well what about Peter the night before. Oh forget it, I accept I wanted to talk to that girl! And come to think of it, she was nice and cheerful J

Well I better not go into too much detail… that would mean describing over a dozen people on the way and the conversations we had in trying to locate Wesley. None of them had even heard of such a place. Amongst the last of them were a couple of University security officers in a car, whom we expected would be know-alls on locating places. But all they could offer, after their own small discussion, was that it would be best if we headed over the main building and inquired at the reception. We hesitated, the main building was a bit far and decided to ask a couple that were coming along (by now we were getting tired and hence we stopped looking out for pretty single girls). They repeated what we had just heard from the security officers and made some small talk. It turned out the guy was visiting India the following week. Don’t ask me about the girl, I have no clue. So left with not much option, I asked Chitaranjan to wait with the luggage and headed for the main building. It was nearing 1PM now. I walked upto the reception and saw that everyone had dispersed for lunch. Just as I was heading back out, I saw a couple of gentlemen, quite old, walking in. I asked them about the reception timings and then to our original issue of locating our housing. The older guy told me to go to the student accommodation assistance desk at the University centre and told me the directions, which was a bit confusing as it involved quite a few turns. He then turned to the other guy, they spoke something, bid goodbyes and then asked me to follow him as he was headed in roughly the same direction. And so I reached the assistance desk. I asked her about Wesley. She too seemed clueless. But thankfully she logged onto the Internet and managed to locate it on Google maps and then marked the spot for me on our map book.

And we were off again, this time with both purpose and direction. We had to walk for another half an hour before we finally reached the doors of Wesley International House. There was a num-pad for unlocking the door but we obviously had no clue of the code. So we rang the bell and a middle-aged, friendly looking guy, white hair and specs, opened the door after a few seconds. We began fumbling for words; we forgot what we were to say and then I started “Dr. Keith Brain had made…” and before I could say any further he shot in “Shailesh and Chitaranjan” … ooh I was impressed! This guy actually knew our names and that made us feel quite welcomed. He introduced himself as Paul, the manager, and guided us inside to his office where he went about giving us a quick overview of all the facilities, taking us to the common kitchen, the storage areas, freezers, study room, tv room and so on. He told us about the locality, the way to the markets and the University. We asked him whether there was a phone booth anywhere around that we could use right away and he offered us the office phone. I wanted to inform Peter that we had managed to find our way and would come over shortly, but the phone line was dead so that had to wait. Paul took out two keys and walked us to our rooms; Chits got #36 and me #34, quite close by, and more importantly close enough to the washrooms J

We spent some time in our rooms, unpacking the things that were of immediate use and taking documents that we would need at the University. We soon left Wesley and found our way to the University, which was a 10 minute a walk away. We asked our way around for both a cafeteria and a phone booth. One of the pay phones we happened to find also turned out to be having a dead line but we eventually located another and managed to get in touch with Peter. It was decided that we shall meet him below the clock tower (called Old Joe – and certainly something you can’t miss from anywhere in and around the campus – after all it’s the world’s tallest free standing clock tower!) at half past two and get the registration formalities attended to. That gave us enough time to grab a quick bite first. We found our way to the cafeteria. After going through all they had to offer and more importantly the figures on the right, I settled for a sandwich and coke while Chit went for some rice/pasta combo. We sat down and had our food but still had had some time to spare. We wandered around and entered a general store within the campus area. We were totally impressed with the right hand side figures here; or rather they were placed below each item here. Everything seemed so affordable. Both of us began mentally noting down that we will take one of this, two of that and so on- but yeah all that after we finally get our first pay.

We walked over to the clock tower well before the scheduled time and waited, taking in the various sights of the campus. Soon Peter came walking along and took us towards the administrative buildings of the campus. The next hour or more involved going in and out of several rooms, up and down lots of stairs, waiting in a couple of small queues, and so on. I finally came to know that the University had accidentally assigned the same registration number to both of us; did they think we were some combo offer or something?! Anyways it meant that I would have to wait for them to send me a new link for registration and then only I would get my ID card. Chitaranjan managed to get his. We also had to visit a place where we got our passports checked and the lady also passed along two packets meant for new students having guides about Birmingham and other useful stuff for people new to the place. She also passed along two free sim cards, pre-loaded with £0.50, as she wasn’t sure whether the packets had them. It turned out they did and we ended up having two mobile numbers each and £1 between them for free. That was really handy and a big tick off the to-do list. Peter then took us to the finance section where we would have to come fortnightly to collect our pay cheques. Then taking the cheques we went to the bank on campus where we finally managed to get some real money in hand! Chitaranjan in excitement began waving it in his hand and Peter suggested it might be a good idea to keep it inside before everyone sees it :p

Now that we were done with all the formalities, atleast for the time being, as I would have to go the following day to inquire about my ID card, we headed for the lab. The lab, and the Medical School, in general was located a bit away from the rest of the campus, on the other side of the railway line. So it was short 10 minute walk and we reached the Medical School. Peter took us in, informing the security that we were new students and still had to get access rights on our ID cards. He gave us a quick round of the building, the common rooms, lunch rooms and such stuff. We then headed for the lab and office. The office was small room, just fine for 2 people but too cramped for 3. We kept our things in the office room and visited the lab. Chris, a summer project intern, was around doing some work. Peter introduced us and then proceeded to give us a quick intro of the various facilities in the lab. We spent the rest of the day chatting about some lab stuff, fun stuff and useful stuff.

On the way back we decided to go to a supermarket that Peter had suggested was the most economical around (he infact said that the campus supermarket that we had been to was quite expensive and we began wondering, wow!). It was called Aldi. So we set off in the evening, finding out way about. After quite a bit of walking, we managed to find our way and spotted the ALDI signboard ahead. We walked forward and got in. Me and Chit did a customary inspection by walking down the lanes and checking the prices. They had several offers going on and we were excited! We picked up several stuff, enough to last us a few days. We paid at the counter without any great tales to tell and got out. Once we were outside, I looked around and found that the ALDI store was in fact further ahead! We had mistakenly got into another supermarket called TESCO! Hehe… The next day we did infact go to ALDI and they did have even better rates. But both these shops are where we do the bulk of our shopping nowdays.


A short note: Hey as you can make out, I am getting a bit bored writing about the mundane stuff… and I am pretty sure you won’t have much fun reading it as well. Also, more importantly, I am having a really tough time finding time to update this blog. I am reluctant to end this here; so will be sure to post atleast a couple more experiences that I had in mind.

Lesson learnt! If writing a blog, don’t start on the backfoot with a lot of pending stuff to write :p Next time around I decide to do a travelogue, I will ensure I start on day 1.

13th August, 2012 – Day 2 – Part A

We got up early the next day, or rather Chitaranjan did and I took the excuse of letting him get ready first to grab an extra hour of sleep. The bed was really comfortable and I don’t know how or when I had turned 90 degrees (or some multiples of it!) to end up dozing with my head on Chit’s tummy… I confess it was marginally softer than the hotel’s soft pillows ;) Anyways he shoved me off and I had to re-align myself back on my side of the bed. By the time he was done with shower and whatever else he did inside (he took real long!) I was ready with my battle gear (against germs and those other stuff :p). I told Chitaranjan about the wifi facility and he got busy with that. It was evident he had a nice lavish bubble bath in the bath tub. There was still some foam on the walls. Being second I neither had the time nor intent to do the same. Admiring my amazing oversized-body (I guess we all do when given a chance :p) in the huge bathroom mirrors (just about managed to cover me ;), I went about  brushing, trimming my beard and taking a bath under the shower. I quickly changed my clothes and both of us began packing, or rather repacking, our stuff. Just before we left we realized that we didn’t do the customary photo shoot. So luggage went back on the floor and we started striking poses for the other to snap; both patiently clicking and waiting for their own chance. Finally we made our way down, having double checked that we had not left anything back. I had the local road map that Peter had given us along with the sheet with instructions for today and obviously whatever was left of our pocket money.

We returned the key at the reception and made our way out of the hotel. We roughly had an idea in which direction the railway station was, so we headed off confidently. It seemed to be office hour as we could see several people making their way to their offices; each dressed quite differently, some with tattoos, some with coloured hair, some who were bound to distract their male counterparts in the office (if you know what I mean ;). Once we were in the general location, we asked a passerby and she (obviously we won’t ask a he!) pointed us towards the station.

We entered ‘New Street’ station and found the ticket counter. I wished the lady good morning, took out a £5 note and asked for two tickets to the University (that’s the name of our stop; not that I anytime assumed there is only one University in England!), as was Peter’s instruction. She smilingly obliged, handing me the change (it was only £1.90 per person) and told me to proceed towards platform 10B. As we still had plenty of time (another hour or so to meet Peter at the University station) and neither of us had any breakfast, and more importantly I had just targeted an outlet of BurgerKing (or was it KFC)! I remembered having seen some combo offer on some street hoarding but couldn’t find that here. Rest everything was a tad too expensive (in our current scheme of things) for now, so we decided to move on. We got down the stairs and reached platform 10B where a train was already waiting. The signboard had a different destination to what Peter had told us; but this was platform 10B. So we asked a person nearby whether this train would stop at the University and he said no, that the next one would, and walked away. He quickly retraced his steps and came back to us, saying that the train would indeed stop at the University. We quickly dragged our luggage inside and the doors closed as the train started moving. Peter had told us that the University was the second stop from where we got on. So it was quite straightforward, we had to leave one station and get off at the next. We did confirm with a couple of elderly seated office-goers and they did confirm that it would go to the University. As the first station arrived, Chitaranjan asked an Asian passenger, who was getting off, about the University station. But due to the accent or whatever, he could not understand and apologized and got off. I didn’t bother trying my luck as it was just one more stop and also there was no easy to locate signboard at the station platform that we could spot through the window. The train resumed its journey. Soon the ticket checker came along, in uniform with a pretty huge device around his neck. I smiled and passed along our tickets. He took one look and said that we missed the stop. We were both surprised and/or shocked! How the… what the… damn! It turned out that this was a long distance train (and hence University was the very first stop) and the next stop was around 40 minutes away – which the ticket collector himself simplified for us that it would take around 2 hours for us to get back to our original destination. Luckily he didn’t ask us to take a fresh ticket for the remainder journey etc, but you could see that he was not too thrilled at having two guys with a bulk load of luggage and no tickets.

So we now had a good 40 minutes to while away before we could plan our next step. I was most concerned about Peter waiting for us at the station. I tried calling his number from my mobile but, as in the previous day, it didn’t connect. I was reluctant to ask the other passengers for using their mobile. It would have been so easy if one of them, having confirmed with them at the start about the route, would have told us to get off when the train stopped at the University. I tried messaging Peter and it was delivered, thought I lost Rs. 70 for two short messages. I took the map that I had but it seemed we had already gotten way beyond the maps limits. I passed the tickets and the book to Chitaranjan and began taking in the splendid scenery outside. There were huge farmlands and the journey was certainly a treat for the eye if nothing else.

After a long time we got off at the next station – Cheltenham Spa  (God knows where that would be on a map). We walked towards the exit and I spotted a rail phone beside it. It had two buttons – one for emergencies and the other for rail info. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t consider this an emergency and so pushed the second button. After some recorded messages were played out, quite loud infact, I was pretty sure others standing around could clearly hear it, a lady picked up asked us how she could help. We told her that we were at Cheltenham Spa and that we wanted to go towards the University at Birmingham and wanted to know the train schedule and the ticket fare. She checked her system and got back, again the speaker being quite loud, telling us that the next direct train would be in another 40 minutes or so  and that the fare for 2 adults would come out to be something like £43! After that “Forty…” I couldn’t focus much :p I verified that the price was for 2 adults on a one-way journey to University and she confirmed. The announcements being quite loud, I didn’t want us to appear like a couple of fools and so didn’t bother pestering her further. Chitaranjan obviously having heard the price was shocked and asked me. I said yeah that’s what she said, but let’s go to the ticket counter and confirm.

There were two counters – one with an old guy and the other a younger chap. The latter was free and a quick stereotyping made me think that the young guy would be more understanding and helpful, whereas the old guy might be a sticking by the books kind of guy from long service, and so I made my way to the younger one. I told him what had happened and asked him the price for the tickets. He naturally told us the same rate just in a different way - £21.50 per person! I went back to Chitaranjan and told him the news, both of us laughing at one another. We started counting how much we had on us and considering we were each given £20 in the first place, there was no way we could bring up enough for the ticket – not to say after having had a very nice dinner the night before! I walked back to the counter and asked them whether they would accept dollars. As was expected he said no. I asked him whether there was any currency exchange centre nearby. He said that there was a post office just across the station and they might have it. I asked Chitaranjan to wait with the luggage while I walked along towards the post office, which was quite close by. It was actually located within a supermarket, as is quite the norm here it appears. I joined the short queue and began looking through all the info that was put up on the notices and posters. I saw something about dollar rate, euro rate etc and was glad that our problem was to be solved. As my chance came, I told the lady I wanted to convert $50 to £. She looked apologetic and said that they only converted Euros there. I asked her about the exchange rates that were posted to which she replied something that I could not make out. I didn’t bother asking her again- quite simply I was not going to get any dollars converted there! So I walked back to the station to pass on the great news to Chitaranjan. I went back to the ticket counter and told him that the post office turned us down and asked what we could do now. He said that there is a bus every 10 mins to town, a short while away, from the station and there we would certainly be able to get our money converted.  I told Chitaranjan the same .He said that we should rather just travel ticketless and see what happens when caught. I wasn’t too keen on the same as it would basically involve Peter having to get us out of trouble and I didn’t want to bug him more especially after wasting his time in the morning. Me and Chitaranjan had quite a bit of to and fro on this and finally agree that I would call up Peter, and see if he offers any suggestion on this; else I go to town, get cash and buy the tickets. Inbetween, Chitaranjan got an international call on his mobile and with the remote possibility of it being Peter, I told him to pick it up. He reluctantly did and I observed him trying to make out what might be going on. It turned out that it was a spirited telemarketer from back in India who just ate up Chit’s Rs.80 for accepting an incoming call while on international roaming! I grinned and left.

I found a payphone just outside the station and put in a few coins and began dialling Peter’s number. Immediately Chitaranjan came running along and began waving excitedly. I quickly cut the call, ensuring I got my coins back and followed Chitaranjan. He was talking to an Indian guy, middle-aged and a few extra pounds here and there. There is this saying that India’s unity in diversity truly comes alive when you are abroad (does that saying actually exist or did I make it up?!). We shaked hands and introduced ourselves and our situation. He said that since we had accidentally missed our stop, we need not bother getting fresh tickets and could just explain the matter at the counter. We told him that we had already tried that. He asked us to show our tickets. Chitaranjan took out the map book and picked out the two tickets from inside it. The Indian guy took it up to the counter, this time the one with the older chap. You could see that the Indian was a resident of the place by how well he knew the staff and greeted them by name. He narrated our story and the old guy said that we could hop on the train and explain to the ticket checker and that he will decide on what to do. Unless he was in a particularly grumpy mood, he would let us go. I guess I forgot initially, when deciding on the counters, that with age one earns both experience and wisdom. So now that we were being advised by two more experienced people, we were convinced on how to proceed. We thanked the Indian guy and he left.

I decided to go back and call Peter to inform him the story till now. He picked up and I started off asking him whether he received my message earlier. He said no he had not (damn! I was charged Rs.70, never mind, but on top of it never got delivered!). I began apologizing profusely and explained the situation. I hate it when I waster others time and was really sorry about this. I told him that we were planning to catch a train back and that since it would take time we shall get off at the University and make our way to the accommodation and then give him a call. I finished off saying that since language won’t be an issue here, we could certainly manage it on our own. That line sounded quite familiar as I had used it just the previous night when I convinced him that we could find our way to the University station on our own! :p As I started running out of coins, I had to hang-up soon after. We walked towards our platform and made ourselves comfortable as there was still a wait for our train to arrive. Fiddling around in my pocket, out came a couple of tickets. And these were the ones that I had bought today morning. Then what was inside the map book that Chitaranjan had taken out?! Surprised we opened the map book to find the two tickets. Looking at the date we saw that they were dates 6 months back! Obviously there were tickets that Peter might have taken on some earlier travel and left in the map book. And these were the tickets that we had been showing around everywhere – to the Indian, the station master and possibly even the ticket checker! The fact that none of them saw anything wrong tells you how observant they were :p

After some time our train came and we hopped on. This time we kept track of every passing station, ensuring that we didn’t blunder again. We did hope that the ticket collector didn’t turn up, but obviously hoping wasn’t going to stop him. He did appear soon and approached us. We had taken out our map book and pamphlets to make it more than evident, if it wasn’t already with all our luggage and interesting story, that we were tourists and new to the place. We narrated our story again and put on our sad faces ;) Like the previous ticket checker, this one wasn’t too amused either but left with a feeble smile. Woohoo we had just saved over £40! J After around 40 minutes, we were back where we had passed by almost 2 hours ago – the University station!

To be continued…