Distance

One of the strangest things about moving to a different country (especially one as insular as the USA) is the sense of detachment that you get with regards to goings on back home. Naturally, this has been most evident recently with London being present in the news - both for good (Olympics - got one over on the French there!) and bad (the bomb attacks this morning). The first i heard of the former was on the phone to my Mum - they'd heard the result a few hours earlier. With the latter, it was this morning when one of my new colleagues told me about it (i have no TV or radio here yet - but rest assured i will by September when the new seasons of TV programmes start). It feels rather unusual - given that i'm used to being on the same island as these events (certainly in the same time zone). Being some distance way makes it all seem unreal. I guess it something i'll get used to it with time.

On other fronts, i know have a project to be going on with and am ready to start some experiments. Of course, it'll take a couple of weeks to get things up to steam (what with me having to figure out new techniques, where stuff is in the lab, go through any training stuff and so on) but i'm looking forward to it. At least it means i can figure out a lot of the protocols now and then work my way through experiments at a reasonable pace. Of course, i can hope that they all run smoothly and perfectly first time - but real life is never like that now, is it? Things would always crash and burn in the UK - so i don't see any reason why it should change because i'm on a different continent. Rest assured, if i accidentally manage to create some freakish yeast mutant that goes on the rampage and starts killing, you'll all be the first to know. I guess one advantage about being here is that at least i'll be able to use a gun to try and stop it!