AMS Begins

Is no-one but me and Hong going to post here? Come on... you can do it!

Anyway... my first (and second) day.

Well, to begin with, Addenbrooke's Hospital is HUGE. Not just large in the way the Austin, with its two sites, is, but imagine taking all the Austin's land, then covering it completely in buildings. This map might give an idea of the size, though not how tall each building is.

View Larger Map

Fortunately for me, after walking down to the hospital (15 mins), I was met by one of the two people in my research group, and he took me up to the lab. I have no idea how I would have been able to find it, otherwise.

The second thing that surprised me is the amount of funding that the multitudes of researchers here have. My group was only founded a year ago, and at the moment it consists of 4 researchers including me, as well as my supervisor, who is a clinician most of the time. Despite this tiny size, we have the funding to buy anything we want, including an expensive new QtPCR machine (much nicer than the one at my old lab), two LCM (laser-capture microdissection) machines, and piles of other stuff. I don't know where this kind of funding comes from, but it's nice to know that I am allowed to "try out" expensive research techniques without money being a barrier. I suppose that being able to get large amounts of funding with relative ease is a benefit of having one's research group in England's largest research hospital... Somewhat daunting, though.

So yesterday was, of course, all about administration. I'm not even allowed to work without a full OH&S induction. Today, I went through said induction, pinching myself to keep awake, and almost falling off my chair when I actually did fall asleep. There was another guy with me, and I almost had to poke him to wake him up once. Ah well, at least now I can work... or could, if they didn't require me to go and have a Hep B booster tomorrow. Not because my immunity is low; I had my vaccination 12 years ago, and antibody levels were nice and high when they were tested 2.5 years ago. They know this. No, it's because here in England they realised that for people in high-risk professions, where HBV immunity is important, it is more cost-effective and equally efficacious to give a booster 5 years post-vaccination than to check serum antibody levels. I love the illustration of the bureaucratic process: since this is policy, it does not matter that I have already done the more expensive option, (twice) verifying the superfluity of this booster. I must have it anyway, wasting half a day of my time. "Half a day?" you say incredulously, "surely a single vaccination wouldn't take that amount of time!" Well, no, it shouldn't. But despite working in an hospital, of all places, I can't get my vaccination there. I have to travel to the centre of Cambridge to have my vaccination done there, since apparently they don't have doctors at the hospital or something. Maybe they just don't want me to associate the hospital with pain and sharp pointy objects or something...

At least now I have my long list of things to do. I will be pretty flat out until next Wednesday, since my supervisor wants me not only to score 9 TMAs, (which is not too bad since I've been doing that all year, and these ones are easy) he also wants me to be competent with tissue culture and QtPCR by the end of the week. This in addition to working on a patient database. I don't know how many hours he thinks I have in a week! Ah well, it will be good to get a lot of learning out of the way in the first week or two, so I can concentrate on getting some good data.

I've been walking into the centre of Cambridge a couple of times. It's a pretty long walk; 2.5 miles, but it's pleasant enough, and saves me the £3.30 return trip on the bus. It's been very warm but also pouring with rain: photos to follow. I'm planning to go punting with my workmates in a week or so, so I shall post photos of that when it occurs. Now I ought to go and make some dinner. Hope everyone's having a good time! Please post something...