Fired?

Clear your desk by the end of January

I'd given up on my job a few weeks ago, but now it is official. Of course officially I've not been fired. Officially, I spent a year as a post-doctoral researcher, but couldn't see any future at the university. Inofficially the faculty will be glad to see the back of me, and I'll be glad to be gone. I suppose you can say "by mutual agreement".

Torpedo Entenhausen 2 - Blue Star Oblomow 3

At the final hurdle we lost for the first time in the Rückrunde, despite leading 2-0 at half-time. The Blue Stars had a chance of promotion, and overcame their nervous start to secure the points, but to no avail: Red Star Fussek won their last game to clinch the second promotion spot and join Black and White Bochum, the second division champtions, in division one next year.

Torpedo Entenhausen finished in eighth place, making up for a disappointing Hinrunde with fourth place in the Rückrunde table. A full statistical analysis of the spare time league can be found here

Can Anyone beat Seven?

I was surfing the internet at work when I found this list of reasons to quit work. Reason zero should probably have been "you found this website while randomly surfing the internet at work." I'm already in internal resignation mode, so my score of 7/10 doesn't surprise me.

I'm not happy with this state of affairs, and I'm trying to change my life. I think I only started this job because last December I was too depressed to think what I really wanted to do. I'm getting help for the depression now, and hope that I will be soon in a position to get a job that suits me, and then be in the position to keep doing it.

The Natural Order of Things

Football is a winter sport. It is played on muddy pitches when it is cold and rainy. The only exception is the Cup Final, played in May, when the sun shines, and the fans have a grand day out. This splendid occasion marks the end of the football season.

During the English summer, there is not enough time to play football! People are too busy watching and playing cricket. If the cricketers are taking a well-earned rest, there may be time to take a round of golf, play croquet on the lawn, see the hats and horses at Ascot, or watch the fine ladies and gentlemen play tennis at Wimbledon.

Switzerland and Austria are small alpine nations. They are covered in mountains, and the more adventurous Englishman may dare to ski down a mountain in the winter. During the summer, Swiss and Austrian people like to relax by climbing mountains, hiking and yodeling. No right-minded Englishman would want to play football in the summer, on the side of a mountain!

...No One Said it's Fair

I just unwillingly threw a portion of cream across a bakery. It landed about 1.5m away, intact, just behind me to my right. I had one of those shakes. I never shook with something in my hand before, and just shook about 20 times in 5 minutes.

I'm in the middle of a nervous breakdown. Literally, my nerves have broken down. I'm not in control of what I do. I think I've calmed down a bit now, though, as I write. It's a scrawl, but I haven't thrown my pen across the room, either willingly [1] or unwillingly.

I slept too little and ate too little last night. I still don't get the tutorial.

[1] Willingly thrown pens travel at least 20 yards unless they hit a wall. Unwillingly thrown pens probably go as far as coffee-cream portions.

Update - I held the tutorial. It wasn't great, but I tried to make the best of a bad job. I wrote the above on a piece of paper at 10:30 this morning. I corrected only for mistakes, and not for the simplistic sentences and repetition of words.

I quit

Warning: Rant.

I've been trying to think positively. I've been trying to avoid perfectionism, and making the best of bad/indifferent/good-but-not-perfect jobs. But today I have failed. I was in a lecture today, and could see the boredom creep across the students faces. Tomorrow I can entertain them with an electrostatics exercise.

It's another of those "I'm a fucking clever bastard: sod the fundamental principles, let's get lost in the mathematics" exercise. Expressions pop up from nowhere and in the end some parameters which I don't understand are calculated. There's some random fucking equation which appears from nowhere with the explanation that "a is a geometry parameter (dimension: length), which determines the diameter and position of the [infinitely long] cylinder".

For my whole life I've been using two parameters to determine the position of long cylinders. One for where it is, and one for how thick it is. The toilet roll is 10cm from the cubicle wall and has 5cm diameter. The lead piping is in the library, 2 feet from Miss Scarlett and 1 inch thick. But no! It is possible to put it all in one, apparently. I think it's some kind of scaling thing: a cylinder twice as thick twice as far away looks the same as one once as thick and once as far away. So is a a ratio? No, it has dimensions.

I want to understand things. Engineers seem happy with parameters which describe some unknown length. I'm not. So tomorrow I will stand and try to explain to the students this crap. They'll be bored and become boring engineers. I will fuck off out of here and do god-knows-what, but something different to this shit.

FC Polterberg 2 - Torpedo Entenhausen 2

I'm undergoing therapy for depression, and trying to see things in a more positive light, so I'm not going to worry about terribly miskicking a tap-in which would have cancelled Polterberg's early lead. The goalkeeper was on the floor, the goal was gaping, the ball wasn't even coming fast and nobody was near me, yet somehow my shot dribbled past the far post.

But enough about that. I've made a habit of scoring with tap-ins and rebounds, and it was time for something better. So two-nil down and with five minutes left, I made a run down the left, passed and got the return, and shot from the edge of the area into the bottom corner. Things got even better in injury time as Markus, our goalkeeper, sprinted upfield to take control of the ball. Seeing the resulting confusion in the defence, he had time to feint one pass, then play in Georg, who shot into the corner of the goal for the equaliser. It was his first shot of the match and his first goal of the season. There wasn't even time to restart the match.

I've never seen a goalkeeper help save a game like that. Usually in professional games they just go forward for corners or freekicks, looking for a header. The difference between the spare-time league and higher leagues is probably in fitness levels (all except the goalkeepers are tired out by the end) and ability (a goalkeeper can be just as good an outfield player as the rest). It's a tactic that we may try repeating.

Torpedo Entenhausen 4 - Megalomaniacs Herne 0

In my absence, my teammates have kept the unbeaten streak of Torpedo Entenhausen intact with two 3-3 draws, helping to consolidate our slow but steady rise into mid-table mediocrity (see graph above, showing league position throughout the season, courtesy of SG Sundern). That green stripe shows the promotion slots, from which we are safely removed.

My travels saw me relegated to the bench for the first half of tonight's game. The Torpedo Fanblock tried winning the affection of the sole WAG[1] of the Megalomaniacs by opening her flask of tea, but without success: we couldn't open the flask, and she seemed happy with her present love, even though he played in a woolly hat.

After the first half ended goalless, our substitutions turned the match, with all four goals coming from the bench, including a rare left-footed finish from me. The Megalomaniacs played the whole match with 10 players who looked a bit tired by the end, so I suppose it's no surprise that we turned out winners.

[1] I suppose that when only one footballing partner arrives, it should be a Wife Or Girlfriend, but I decided not to pursue that acronym.

p.s. The first edition of this post had the word mediocracy instead of mediocrity. The latter is the correct word in this context indicating a state of being mediocre. The former is a rare word meaning "rule by the mediocre"; compare to democracy (rule by the people), aristocracy (rule by the nobs) and plutocracy (rule by a cartoon dog).

Some things I did and didn't do

Thursday 1st November

I had some good plans for today, my last day in New York. I thought of going to downtown Manhatten and seeing the financial district and the Statue of Liberty. I thought of getting a ferry to New Jersey and seeing the site of the Burr-Hamilton duel, where the Burr, Vice President of the US, killed his rival. This would have made a fun day out, and shown how far the US has come since those lawless days of trigger-happy Vice Presidents.

In the end I did neither. The subway looks scary, and walking is impossible, with lights fixed to stop you for a minute at every block.

So I went to Central Park again. It's great. You can walk for more than 100 yards in a stretch. There are trees, grass, birds and squirrels. You start to appreciate these things more when stuck in the concrete of Manhattan. I juggled and got the rocking shoulder motion of the four-ball Mills mess just right. I passed some statues: Columbus, Walter Scott, Robert Burns, Shakespeare and King Jagiello of Poland. I guess this shows the shortness of white American history and the importance of immigration to New York.

On the Great Lawn I saw a man playing baseball with his two kids. I offered my services as a second baseman, and we had a good little game with imaginary runners on the bases. It turned out that the guy was from Nottingham, about 30 miles from Sheffield, my home town. So the only baseball game in Central Park was being played by two cricket-trained Englishmen. You can easily spot cricketers playing baseball, as they don't see the need for a glove, and turn inside pitches disdainfully to square leg.

Health Warning

Wednesday 31st October, 8pm

Watching lots of videos showing heart motion, blood flow and clogged arteries hast got me on a health streak. Seeing a video of a carotid artery (that's the one you feel on your throat, and also the one you learn to cut silently during ninja training), all but clogged up, with just a small gap letting the last drops of blood flow to the brain is scary.

I'm now eating ots of apples and went for another jog round Central Park, feeling my heart to check that it was beating nicely. I've been eating oatmeal (that's the American name for porridge) for breakfast. I didn't expect to find it here, but a small diner on the junction of 57th Street and 7th Avenue do a nice oatmeal/banana combination.

Presentation

Wednesday 31st October, 8am

Well the talk about pulse measurements went quite well. I should have known from my years in particle physics that not knowing what you're talking about isn't really a problem. Just turn up on time with the right clothes and some slides that someone else made and talk away.

I never know how talks that I give are going to go. Sometims I freeze, get confused and lost for words. Other times I get into the flow and it goes well. Today I managed to pronounce "Photoplethysmograph" correctly, and slipped in a couple of jokes that got a laugh. They weren't good jokes, but in an engineering conference they don't have to be.

I then went for a jog all the way round Central Park. I keep thinking about manic depression. Yesterday I went from self-hatred and tears to happy and confident within two hours. I can go back in the same time, if not shorter.

Doubt

Tuesday, 30th October.

I'm holding a talk this afternoon about measuring heart pulse (that expansion of the artery you feel when you put your finger on your throat/wrist). I guess that any medical doctor will see that I know fuck all about arterial blood flow. Any electrical engineer will see that I know fuck all about electronics. And any physicist will see that my error bars are way too big.

I can see it, as I'm a physicist. You don't need to know anything about the subject to say that this graph is bullshit. Nature don't work like that.


If you're not a physicist, let me tell you a secret. If those error bars show one standard deviation, then if you fit a line through all the points, about one third of the points shouldn't touch the line with their error bars. A plausible plot looks something like this:



I didn't make the plots, and couldn't be bothered to sort out the error analysis. I'm just the gimp who does the talk. My worst case scenario is to tender my resignation on the spot (with 3 months' notice), go for a juggle in central park, and find a good strip club.

World Series

Sunday, 28th October

I'm quickly getting the hang of baseball terminology, which is almost as confusing as cricket terminology. The New York Times wrote yesterday that during the regular season

[David Ortiz] looked like he was stumbling down a steep hill and then barreling through a revolving door when he corralled one pop-up on a windy day

This means that, in cricketing terms, he shelled a skier, or spilled a dolly.

I used to think that baseball was about hitting home runs, but there is a lot more to it. I watched games 3 and 4 of the World Series, and have seen a bunt (cricket equivalent: forward defensive shot plus a quick single), a double play (cricket equivalent: a run out at both ends, which is imaginable although not possible with the present laws) and a player stealing third (cricket equivalent: running when the bowler isn't looking).

I've also learnt what a designated hitter is: a batter too fat to run, see Ortiz/Inzamam, and that they exist in the American League but not in the National League. This means that there are two sets of rules for the World Series, which is played between the champions of the two leagues. When Boston (AL) played at home, they could use Ortiz, their immobile slogger, to bat in place of their pitcher, but when they played in Colorado (NL) he had to field at first base. In the end he did just fine.

Gala

Monday 29th October, 9pm

I am turning into my dad. He has made a habit of avoiding posh events. Whenever forced to turn up anywhere in a suit, he grumped around for an hour and then went off for a walk. Now people have stopped inviting him, so he's free to go and run up and down hills.

I did the same (except for the hills, of course) at the Gala of the conference in the grand ballroom of the New York Hilton. I started to get unhappy when I realised that I was missing the Torpedo Entenhausen game. Then came the smarminess of some guy thanking the hotel staff "who came from all over the world to watch rich white men pig themselves and slap themselves on the back". What finally flipped me was a professor being given a $2000 prize, and his laudator thanking him for "20 years in the trenches". It's a fucking hard life building ultrasound devices. The mustard gas, shell shock, trench foot, etc.

All this indignation and walking out still leaves me a fucking hypocrite. Would it be better not to thank the staff? I guess not. And of course I pigged out on the food before I left, and I'm not going to volunteer for a war anytime soon. I don't have any answers, but I'm fucking annoyed. Maybe that's a start.

Word Count

Monday 29th October. 5pm

I've been reading the New York Times, which I like. In today's obituaries, the composer of the world's longest diary is featured. From 1935 until 1997, Robert Shields wrote 37.5 million words about his life, recording every detail such as his body temperature, blood pressure and junk mail. I have managed 170-odd posts, giving me an estimated 50,000 words. Were I to blog for another millennium, I might just break the record. Would you like to hear about the solidity of my number twos...

At the conference, I managed to present a poster which I knew almost nothing about. Only one guy noticed, and explained that he had published the same work already, but had done it better. After the poster session I had a confidence crisis, and thought about juggling in Central Park to cheer myself up.

Central Park

Sunday 28th October

The pumpkin gutting has tired me out. I have bits of pumpkin wedged deep into my fingernails, and a pumpkin rash on my forearms. I spent the day reading the New York Times and juggling in Central Park. The skyscrapers of Manhatten are really pretty when viewed through a five-ball reverse cascade. A kid called Brad (aged 3) threw me some juggling balls and showed me how to pass an American football.

Pumpkins

Saturday 27th October

I am in New York for a conference on Ultrasound. I was probably the only person to check into the New York Hilton wearing odd socks (one purple, one green). This morning, I decided to get away from the traffic and Starbucks and went to Central Park, which is five minutes from the hotel. As it was raining, the park was quite empty, although there were plenty of joggers.

I then chanced upon a man, stood on a table, directing a large group of people how to turn 30,000 pumpkins into Jackolanterns. His plan was a division of labour into cutters, gutters and carvers, with carriers and candlers too. Having no real plan for the day, I offered my services and spent the day gutting pumpkins. Eight hours later, a little bit of Central Park looked beautiful, with the lanterns, sometimes scary, sometimes funny, lighting the ways. The centre piece was a pyramind of lanterns with heart shapes cut into them.

I pilfered the photos from some guy on Flickr. I hope he doesn't mind.



This post was part of my plog. I have made some corrections and added photos and links.

America

I am in a hotel in Long Island. I have been left behind by the wifi revolution and didn't manage to get on the internet for a whole week in New York. The cheapest internet cafe I could find was $0.49/min, so I decided to write postcards instead of emails and start a "paper log", or "plog". Sometime I'll type them up and add the correct dates. Today I am heading for Boston.