A Nagasaki Pot Pourri

Some more things that have caught my lens this week in Nagasaki:

Everything is cute, even poop.


There are little cats everywhere, frequently missing their tails.
Everything is decorative, even man hole covers



Interesting menus

Interesting marketing strategies:

Things we don't get back in Australia

I found this in my hotel bathroom:


It features a heated seat, and various kinds of spraying facilities, including some kind of oscillating option. I haven't tried them to be honest. Right now I'm content enough to giggle at the pictures.

I have also been into a few public toilets while walking around Nagasaki today, and I don't mind saying they are a darn sight nicer than your average public loo in Australia. Not all public loos come with sprays, but they do all come with a speaker, that says something (in Japanese) to you the moment you sit down, followed by a recording of a toilet flushing sound. This is not an optional extra. It seems that even if you are not embarrassed enough by the tinkling sounds made in a toilet, nobody else wants to hear you do it.

Changing the subject for a moment, look what I got out of the vending machine this morning:

It's a can by the way. But it has a screw top lid. All the advantages of a can, with the convenience of being able to save some for later (although the can couldn't have been bigger than 200 ml)

Also, later in the day I got this, totally sucked in by its clever slogan:

I must say, I do like the vending machine culture around here. You can get coke, water, beer, cigarettes, iced-tea, iced-coffee, fermented bean juice, underwear, whatever you want. About every 50 metres. Actually, I didn't see an underwear vending machine in Nagasaki, but I've heard about them in Tokyo.

Culture Shock

I arrived in Nagasaki yesterday for a conference. Unfortunately I'm staying in a different hotel from the rest of the conference mob (i.e. the only other people in Nagasaki that speak English). So I'm about 2 km down the road at the ANA, feeling slightly bewildered and to be honest, a bit culture-shocked.

I thought I was going to be able to use my Visa card for everything so I wasn't too fussed about getting some Yen before I left Australia. But I was very wrong. I haven't seen a single opportunity to use a Visa yet, and neither have I seen an ATM willing to take my Australian bank card. So money was my first problem. I solved that by getting money from my Visa account. This of course means you instantly start paying interest. So I decided to quickly head back to my hotel, jump on the internet and transfer the money over to pay off the visa account.

My laptop battery died before I had a chance to log in. No problem I thought, I'll just plug it in using the handy plug converter I brought with me. It wasn't handy at all as it turns out. I was under the impression that Japanese plug sockets were the same as North American but they are not. They do not have an earth pin. Therefore my handy plug converter with its earth pin would not plug in. Bugger. So I went down to the hotel reception and tried to ask if they had a plug converter that would work for me. Eventually they came back with this:

What am I meant to do with that? No seriously, I tried to ask them. They shrugged. Okkkkkaaaaayyyy. I was a teeny bit nervous about being electrocuted , but I plugged in my converter and then my laptop cable.


And amazingly, it worked. I may have been culture shocked but I wasn't electric shocked. The laptop charged and sparks didn't fly. It doesn't seem right though, does it? Does it? Leave a comment if you know.

I was so tired from being awake for 30 hours that I went to bed at 7 pm (but not before I exchanged the buckwheat filled pillows with fluffy pillows) and woke up at 5:30am this morning. I faffed around for a while with my free internet connection and my charged laptop, before heading off down to get my western breakfast. And I was hungry for waffles.

Breakfast was a bit weird, but dining alone always is. Firstly, not only was I the only westerner in the restaurant, but also the only woman. Luckily dining alone was no big deal, since about half the tables appeared to be business men dining alone.

The western food was certainly an interesting experience. They didn't have waffles. What they did have were a few tiny pieces of "pork in bacon" and "pork in sausage", with so few pieces available that I didn't feel comfortable taking more than 1 piece of each. They had "sunny side up" (i.e. eggs) served in little muffin cases! They had something akin to muesli and yogurt, upon which I poured blueberry sauce. That was good, but it would have been nice if the bowl was 10 times bigger. They also had croissants, but in fact they were more like bread rolls shaped like a croissant. So anyway, it wasn't the kind of buffet where you eat so much that you skip lunch. No, I was hungry an hour later. And by then I had found myself a Starbucks, where they spoke Engrish, and they handed me a menu as I walked in the door. The day was starting off quite well.

A quick tour of the Gulf Islands

A few weeks back I posted that I was being sent on an environmental sampling trip around the Gulf Islands for my work. A work-study student and I took a series of two-day trips over two weeks, which took us to Hornby Island, Denman Island, Gabriola Island, Thetis Island, Mayne Island and Galiano Island.

All of the islands were beautiful, but for me the highlights were Hornby and Galiano. Hornby was quite small, but very active, with lots of young folk hitting the beach. It also had a fantastic co-op of cafes and food outlets serving delicious, fresh organic food.

Galiano was also great. We camped at Montague Bay. I've been messing around with some software that stitches photos together to make a panoramic. So here's the view from the campsite.



As stupidity on our part would have it, we ran out of work to do on day 2 of Galiano. And since we were stranded on the island until the 4:50 ferry came along, we decided to hike up Mount Galiano. At the top we were absolutely blown away by the gorgeous view - you could see most of the Gulf Islands, and even some of the San Juan Islands from up there. I took a set of photos to put together a 180 degree panoramic view, but it barely does it justice. You'll just have to go there yourself.

Its times like these I love my job

For the next two weeks, as part of my job, I am going to go camping in the Gulf Islands. Specifically I will be going to Vancouver Island, Hornby Island, Thetis Island, Gabriola Island and Galiano Island - all of these places being little gems within the beauty of British Columbia. Just in case I didn't make it clear, I'm being paid to go on this trip!!!
We (myself and a young whippersnapper of a lad, that I am supervising) will be collecting environmental samples from these islands to check for the presence of an infectious fungus that we are investigating in BC. Should be a great trip, although I'm already feeling a generation gap between myself and the whippersnapper, so I hope I don't end up feeling like a grandmother by the end of the trip.

Getting in touch with my inner Cowgirl

Last weekend Bryan and I went to Calgary to visit his brother and sister-in-law (Neill and Sandy), and his parents, who were also in Calgary at the time. It happened to be the weekend of the opening of the Calgary Stampede, an annual event that inexplicably induces the locals to dress up in tight Wrangler jeans, a ginormous belt buckle, cowboy boots ("Remember, you'll be stomping along the grounds for hours, so be sure to buy your cowboy boots well in advance and break them in"), and of course a cowboy hat.

I have never been to Stampede before, and Bryan hasn't been since he left Calgary 13 years ago, so we decided to spend a day getting in touch with our inner cowpersons at the Stampede. We were joined by Neill and Sandy and Bryan's parents. I flat out refused to wear a cowgirl hat (in fact none of us went to any lengths to blend in), and instead wore a Roots hat, just because its funny (nay, hilarious) for an Australian to wear a hat that says "Roots" on it.
So what is a Stampede like? Well, for the benefit of my curious Aussie friends, it's actually a lot like the Sydney Easter show, or the Perth Royal Show. The only difference is that in Australia people wear regular clothes, and there are no chuckwagon races or jousting (yes, I said jousting!). There are still the same fairground rides, hot dogs, toffee apples, farm animals etc.

So what did we do at the Stampede?

• the Tilt-a-whirl ride - my favourite non-scary ride
• one length of the park on the sky ride - basically a chair lift, but surprisingly scary...I'm not keen on heights
• visited the miniature horses and baby farm animals
• jousting
• ate junk food
• a hypnotist show (non-participating)
  
• chuckwagon racing
• Grandstand show, including singing, dancing, and Cirque du Soleil acrobats,
  
• Eukanuba superdogs
  

The Eukanuba Superdog show was the highlight of my day without a doubt. I especially liked two dogs named Tadpole and Pot Roast. Tadpole is a staffie, like my Molly, and was every bit the typical fun-loving, frisbee-chewing, bouncy-frouncy staffie. Pot Roast was a rather overweight bull dog who couldn't run very fast, but he outwitted the small yappy dogs and won the race anyway (the yappy dogs were easily distracted by other dogs, and ran in the wrong direction!).

That's all about the Stampede. It was a good day - I didn't get blisters or a sunburn, and we finished the day off with a spectacular viewing of Aurora borealis.

Sandy and Neill are expecting the pitter patter of tiny feet in January, so we may find ourselves revisiting Calgary around that time. Only in January it will be up to 70 'C cooler than it was last weekend. Umm, I'm not sure how I'm going to like that.

ahh ahhhhhhh

Its so good to be home in Vancouver. Its not nearly as hot as it was in Boston, but I can handle that.

So Boston was good. My conference was excellent, albeit scary. This was the first time I had attended the Cryptococcus conference, and for obvious reasons, it was incredibly relevant to my work. And many of the 250+ delegates were good contacts to make. These are all the people who authored the publications I spend far too much of my time reading, and it was nice to put faces to the names. My PhD supervisor was also at the conference, the first time I had seen him since I left Sydney 2 years ago. It was very interesting to see him interact with his peers. That's all I'm going to say about that.
Something that got me down over the course of the conference, however, was that many of the presenters considered that the Vancouver Island Cryptococcus outbreak (i.e. my work), such a hot topic, that they mentioned it in their presentations. The degree of mentioning my work ranged from a passing comment, to an all-out review of my work, past and present (and not necessarily mentioning my name where appropriate). I would have been ok with this (assuming proper acknowledgement of my work), but I also had to talk about my work, and I was scheduled to talk last, after everyone had hashed and rehashed my work. So by the time my chance to present rolled around I was feeling like I had nothing new to offer. This caused me several sleepness nights, where I worried about how I was going to present my work in a way that wouldn't be repeating what was already presented. So I spent quite a bit of time reworking my slides and my planned speech and decided to rebut the inaccuracies that had been presented by others, regarding my work.
I was dog tired on the morning of my presentation, having had a mere 45 minutes sleep the night before. I was last to speak in my session on the last day of the conference. I was incredibly nervous, ridiculously tired and cold. So I shivered all the way through the session, getting more and more worried about how my talk would be received, and hoping I wouldn't be asked questions - I was in no state of mind for using my brain and putting an answer together. Luckily my talk was so well practiced that it ran like clockwork, and nobody asked me difficult questions. My supervisors and many others told me afterwards that my talk was excellent (phew!), and you couldn't tell that I was actually sleepwalking at the time. I don't actually remember anything more than that, so I am keenly awaiting the DVD they made of every presentation, so that I may refresh my memory.

I also liked Boston. It was a nice city, although we spent our time almost exclusively in the harbour area, with a quick trip out to Harvard one evening. We didn't have a lot of time for sightseeing, but we covered the major points:

• Freedom trail
• Drink at Cheers
• Clam chowder and/or lobster
• New England Aquarium
• Harbour Cruise
• Visit Harvard

Travelling home from Boston did not go as planned. We left for the airport shortly after I had finished my presentation. I could have flown to Sydney in less time than it took to travel from Boston to Vancouver. My supervisor and I were meant to by flying home via Montreal. But when we checked in we were told that the Montreal flight was running late and we would miss our connection if we waited for that flight. So we were rerouted though Toronto. I was ok with this, it meant I would be home about an hour later than originally planned, but it wasn't a huge delay compared to some that I have had flying Sydney to London. However, the Toronto flight was also significantly delayed. It turns out that Toronto airport was closed down due to a freak storm, so Air Canada was not flying in or out of Toronto for several hours. Thus there were no Air Canada aircraft in Boston to deliver us to Toronto until several hours after we were originally scheduled to leave. We finally got to Toronto, but we only had 7 minutes spare to transfer terminals and board our flight to Vancouver. It takes at least 15 minutes to change terminals in Toronto, and they refused to hold the plane for us. Air Canada put us up in a hotel overnight, and gave us a free meal. By now I was too tired to give a damn about missing the connection, and the thought of going to bed was utterly delicious, even if it was in the wrong city. Too be optimistic for a moment (now that I've slept), I did get to see a tiny bit of Ontario as we were shuttled from the airport to our hotel in Mississauga! Oh how you Canadians will laugh at me for saying that.
I got 6 hours of blissful sleep in the Mississauga Sheraton before we had to head back to the airport and take the first flight to Vancouver. Finally I arrived home just after noon, 14 hours after my scheduled arrival home. And oh how I wish I could have gone straight to bed, but I had to join a conference call at 2 pm, and speak intelligibly. By this point however, I had become truly skilled at speaking intelligibly without actually being conscious.
It is so good to be home.