Another Wasted Weekend

Yesterday morning I woke up to the sound of breaking glass. Our heavily cracked bathroom window had blown open in the wind and sent glass everywhere. Thankfully neither of us was relieving themselves below at the time. To get through the Shabbat we opted for the trailer-trash solution: a bran flakes box and masking tape. Tomorrow at work I will ask Itzik, who knows everything and everyone in Jerusalem, if he knows a good glass guy. Having done business with the dodgy looking, but competent Dawson’s Glass and Mirror in the H-hole, I realize that glass guys best come recommended.

Wait! I learned the word for window in my Ulpan last week. What was is again?... ha-lon! (חלון)

It has been very blustery and rainy here again for a second weekend in a row. It is nasty enough that I am not even willing to make the forty-five minute trek to work. I am starting to go batty, BATTY I tell you, cooped up in the apartment. I have been practicing the ‘Brew and working on this wicked hard piece of piano music. I am sure the neighbours below are annoyed with me practicing the same two pages for an hour and a half straight, but TUFF. About a month ago I was putting out the laundry early on a Friday morning, and I dropped a sock onto their clothes line. Instead of leaving it on our doormat or holding on to it, by mid afternoon when we had returned from the shuk they had thrown it in the dumpster! I checked with the labmates; this is rude even for Israel.

The weekend hasn’t been all productive. I have spent an embarrassing amount of time watching videos on the internet. Here is one of my new favs for your viewing pleasure.

התלמידה בולפנ

James and I have started our Ulpan, which is a Hebrew language school. Since many people who learn Hebrew are new immigrants, most Ulpanim are seriously intense: 3-4 hours per day, five days a week. Israelis are serious about getting immigrants to learn Hebrew. We have opted for the only Ulpan in J-town that is less intense and has evening classes. We only have 6 hours per week and I am pretty sure I can still get this transferred as a university credit.

So far, it is pretty fun and not too hard, but I know that will change soon. Our class is comprised of students from France, Finland, Germany, America (Alaska!), Russia, Cameroon, India, Canada, Mexico and Costa Rica and “Palestine” which I think in this case means the West Bank. All of our classmates are friendly although a few have a tendency to blurt out answers and ruin it for everyone else. I secretly hope those folks drop out.

James is enthralled by the classes but I don’t think it is the excitement of learning a new language. Last night as we were leaving, he was humming the Van Halen tune Hot for Teacher. Our instructor is very nice girl named Hendat who somehow gets her point across with only speaking perhaps half a dozen English words in a three hour class.

I think the hardest part right now is reading. There are the print letters, which I am pretty good at, but the script case looks completely different. With no vowels and having to think about the sound of every letter and then remembering the meaning of the word…well, it is hard work. Only practice will make me better.

Smart guys, really smart.

So CUPE Ontairo- one of the biggest Unions out there, has decided that they are going to boycott Israeli academics. Regardless if you are pro Israel, pro Palestinian, or hanging out in the middle, if you think about it you will realize this is really stupid.

A “boycott…aimed at academic institutions and the institutional connections that exist between universities here and those in Israel” (courtesy of the CUPE website) is a really horrible way to promote peaceful resolution and was poorly thought out. Let’s sever communications with the movers and the thinkers of a country so we can convince them that our ideas are best! We all know that playing passive aggressive never works. My husband is either oblivious to the signals and/or is ignoring them. Countries are the same. Talk about misplaced good intentions.

CUPE Ontario members back boycott of Israeli Universities (CBC Link)

On top of the general stupidity, this is going to make job hunting for me really fun this year. If I get told that “the Union won’t let us hire you because you are Israeli academic”, you will see me in court. As in the Supreme Court, jerks.

A rainbow please?

Last night about midnight, I got out of bed to bring the laundry in just as the first claps of thunder started. All night, it rained in driving sheets, the wind howled, the hail pinged and the lightning forewarned the thunder which boomed. Car alarms repeatedly went off on the street below as accompaniment to the symphonic cacophony of weather. When we got up this morning, it was still storming and wave after wave of thunderstorms have brought heavy rain and hail all day. I have never been in a storm that has lasted so long.
I have been surviving this chilly and damp day cooped up in our apartment by wearing my striped long underwear and streaming movie adaptations of Jane Austen novels of which The Chicken has no interest. James has been snuggled under a blanket on the chesterfield reading chemistry papers. But given the rain, he wonders if his time would be better spent turning our wooden bed frame into an Ark. I have been aiding the effort by scheming live traps for the pigeons that poop on our balcony. They might just come in handy for finding dry land forty days from now.

Dear former fume-hood tenant,

From our mutual labmates, I understand that you are a “great guy” and that you did some amazing science while you were here. I want to thank you for the present you left me in the cupboard under fume hood III. I appreciate the neat cardboard box and occasional aluminum foil wrappings of the 75 or so vials of your samples left so kindly for me to clean up for you. And you didn’t just leave me simple little organics that dissolve nicely in acetone, you gave me lovely yellow and red colored goos full of Cadmium, Aluminum, Arsenic, Selenium and Indium. I guess I should also thank you for the kind labels on the vials. Serious toxic waste is what every girl wants for Valentines Day. Such was my one and a half hour clean up of your mess that I ended up actually looking up the LD50 for cadmium and beginning to budget for the cost of a heavy metals screen before I decide to get pregnant.

How can I ever thank you for your kindness.

The current user of Fume Hood III.

See the post-doc in her natural habitiat

Well, I have hit experiment 99 in my lab book this evening and I have imaged over 100 TEM grids since I got here. That is somewhat epic. I hate to think what the boss’ TEM bill is going to be. Then again, I try to keep the tab to a minimum (see below). Chemistry, thankfully, is finally moving forward again. My particles finally decided to cooperate with me since I gave them a little extra air and water free TLC.

AND, I got trained on the high-res TEM yesterday. AWESOME. So much better than driving the Lotus. I saw lots of lattice fringes, used STEM and lots of EDS on tiny areas. For those who have used the ol’JEOL in Edmonton, you know all about serious beam alignment which isn’t necessary with the new low res machines. I think the TEM lady was a little surprised that I aligned the HR like an old pro. Now I am an “Independent User” Anyway, enough of the geek talk.

The boss called looking for me during lunch. Good thing he wasn’t around the labs because half of his students are away studying for exams and the remaining eight of us went out for shawarma for lunch. I had a giant turkey one (yep, that is right, turkey not chicken) with lots of hummus, hot sauce, mystery cabagey stuff, tomatoes and mango sauce. Yorai thankfully ordered for me or else who knows what I would have eaten. It is now 7:30 at night and I am still not hungry. Mmmmm shawarma.

The reason the boss was looking for me was a detail of the meeting I was going to have with the University Rector (like a president) this afternoon. I seem to be well-spoken/foreign/geeky enough to be the chosen live exhibit in the TEM room for every big-wig who comes to see the nanocentre. Or maybe the green lighting of the microscope screen highlights my best features. The tour files into the TEM room to see the post-doc working hard in her natural habitat. “Tell us about your work” is my cue to start the show in ring one. I bring up some pretty pictures on the screen, explain my project with an audience-appropriate level of scientific big words and wax-poetic about the microscope for 5 minutes. Piece ‘o cake. Park ranger skills come in handy again. I get to meet big-wigs and get time on the TEM for free for my services as nanocentre wildlife.

What's in the box?

A while ago, the guy who sold me lasagna at one of the campus restaurants asked for a raise and didn’t get it. So he left. He is now pursuing his other career full time: a mezuzah writer. I had to have this unfamiliar career explained to me and then I started noticing mezuzahs everywhere I looked.

On the entrance to almost every door frame in Israel (at a minimum the front door), there is a little box, usually tilted a little inward with a shin on the front. Inside is a piece of paper with an inscription from Deuteronomy painstakingly hand written with a quill. The pasta guy has in essence become a calligrapher but will write the same passage over and over again.

My labmate Yossi, (religious enough to eat kosher, wear a kippah and a spectacular full beard, but no black suit) tells me that it is important to have it just right or it doesn’t count. To get a good mezuzah, you need to pay the big bucks and make sure the mezuzah writer has a “real fear of God”. He had the one on the door to the students' office checked by a professional mezuzah checker and had to get a new one because there were “mistakes” (probably misshapen letters). Mezuzahs must be part of the university operating cost because they are on every door except the loo.

Curious about what exactly is written on a mezuzah? Well here are thirteen verses of the bible condensed in the Revised Janet Version: God is the bomb. Teach your kids so. Mark your door that you respect God [hence the mezuzah]. Don’t tick off God. Behave. If you do, you get the land God promised. Tell your kids that God got us out of that hell-hole, Egypt.

The cases range from cheap plastic to femo cartoon characters to beautifully ornate silver. And the letter on the front of the box? That is for “Shaddai” which is a really ancient name for the big guy upstairs. (fyi, shin-the w looking letter- makes a “sh” sound) Above are photos I took of the mezuzahs of my lab, office and the apartment doors in my building. The photo of the one our door frame didn't turn out so I didn't include it. 

Mystery Fruit Number 7: The Kumquat

If navel oranges laid eggs, these would be them. I bought a small basket of these mystery fruit at the market yesterday and brought them home for James who was laid up in bed with a cold.

We boldly peeled these wee citrus fruits and tried them out. James said the fruit was too high maintenance for him and I was inclined to agree, even though they were already getting low marks for being lip puckeringly sour. The surface to volume ratio was way too large for them to be a repeat purchase. (I can’t believe I just said that as a nanoparticle researcher. I should be ashamed of myself.)

But we had a whole basket to get through, so I peeled a couple and plunked them in hot water with some mint as tea for the snuffling Chicken on the couch. The tea turned out to be quite tasty despite the odd appearance. There is a bit of a tiff-tiff in our house about the name of the tea. The Chicken wants the G-rated “Orange Ball Tea”. I happen to think they look like a part of the male anatomy – complete with mint leaf for modesty – and the tea should be named accordingly. (And let’s not forget the nifty alliteration)

In the evening we went to the boss’ house for dinner and a bowl of them was sitting on the table. I asked the boss’ daughter about them and she informed me that you are supposed to eat the peel too as that is where the sweetness hides out. Knowing that, they present quite a tasty medley of flavours: there is the sour of the juice, the sweet in the white part, and the undeniable hint of bitter in the peel that is in every citrus.

Two thumbs up for the cumbsquat, or kumquat or whatever they are called.

Freaking irreproducible *$%*@!

So my very exciting and very cool result from the other week is alluding being made again. Reproducibility is very important to us scientists. The entirety of the last two weeks has been spent in the lab trying to nail down the variables and get this reaction to work. My nanoparticles playing hard to get. I have to coax and coddle their secrets out of them with a little TLC and attention to detail. I am a little embarrassed it is taking me so long, but I did learn a useful tidbit of info today: even a tiny bit of oxygen is baaaaad. Which means I am going to have to become a super anal retentive chemist and do all my work in the glove box.

If you haven’t seen a glove box before, think of a fridge box on its side made out of metal with a plexi-glass front. Inside is an oxygen and water free haven: a perfect atmosphere of nitrogen gas with only the gentle breeze of the air circulator. On the front are two giant heavy butyl rubber gloves that look like you are about to aid the birthing of a calf. When you stick your hands in those suckers to work inside the glove box, your fingers, instead of the nimble digits they were before, become these blunt clumsy sausages attached to your sweating arms (remember they are covered in butyl rubber), lab coated torso, impatiently tapping feet and an increasingly abusively vocal head. Not only are you clumsy, but glove boxes are notoriously cramped with chemicals, equipment, vials, solvent bottles and forgotten samples. The one I get the pleasure of working in is particularly old, chemical encrusted, crotchety and ill tempered (see pic). Grrr. I hate working in the glove box. But I’ll do it if I have to. The things I do for my nanoparticles. They had better buy me dinner later.

A rainy day in J-town

It has been rainy and gross here for two straight days. These pics are from the misty walk to work this morning. One of the Monastery of the Cross (this is the valley where trees grew for the cross) and the other is of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. I can count the number of rainy days since I got here on one hand and it doesn’t rain here at all in the summer, really. The earth is dry, very dry and the country is expecting a big drought this summer. Jerusalem is green only because it irrigates like mad with water from the Sea of Galilee (which is fresh). Even the cactus garden on campus gets irrigation lines. Even though I have had a bit of a chill lately, I have to say the rain is a good thing.

A little note about the election:

The Kadima party, headed up by the blond lady, Tzi-pi, eeked out one more seat than her rival, Bi-Bi (as in Benjamin Netanyahu). Think this is a victory and she gets to be Prime minister? WRONG!

Who gets to be PM is now based on who can form the biggest coalition. So, good ol’ BB may squeeze his way to PM again (reminds me of someone else who lost an election but still tried to scratch his way to the big seat. Oh yea, Dion!). And since BB, is more right wing, he will have an easier time getting the religious parties on his side.

According to one of my labmates, forming a large coalition is achieved by appeasing the smaller parties with funding for their agendas. This often means courting super religious parties with money for synagogues, yeshivas (basically theology school) and the like. The tiny parties have much more clout here than you would expect.

I guess there is a lesson for us Canadians. With the Canuck system of regional representation, smaller but significant voices like the Green Party get no say in the house. Which sucks. With the similar system here, but with proportional representation, it has lead to many smaller parties and as a consequence, the small voices are given a megaphone because of the need for coalitions every time there is an election. This sucks too.

Election Day Tomorrow

Big federal election here tomorrow. Who will be the next prime minister? Will it be one of the two PMs of past years or the lady with the blond hair? (Who knew Belinda Stronach went into Israeli politics?) Or will it be the seriously Zionist dude with the big beard and a snow ball’s chance in Tel Aviv?

I have noticed something funny on the election posters. Each has a box somewhere prominent with a Hebrew letter in it. Apparently, when you get your ballot, there are no names but just a list of letters that correspond to the different political parties and you pick your favorite party. Or if you are having problems deciding, you can always pick your favourite letter of the alphabet (Tet (ט) looks good and sassy. Avoid bet (ב): it looks like a hang man game; not a good sign).

A party gets a seat with every so many thousand votes. No pitting local candidates against each other. No regional under or over representation (Well, unless you are from the occupied territory in West Bank. No vote for you.)

Apparently there are almost as many parties as letters in the alphabet. So when the votes are in, no party will have enough clout to form a government alone. They must find buddies and form a coalition and then decide who is going to be PM. Serious backroom finagling. If you think a coalition between the liberals, the socialists and the separatists is odd, you should see what happens here. What a mess.

Honestly, I have no idea what is going on with the politics here. It is all very confusing. And in Hebrew. I did check out some of the websites of some of the smaller parties. Yikes, is all I have to say. Thank goodness for the Libs, the Cons, and the New Dippers: they all look smack in the middle compared to these guys.

Guest Post: Omlette de Fraise

The Chicken’s family has been noticing how often he gets roasted on this blog but I promise, it is all true. So this time when he did something spectacularly chickenish, I decided to let him tell the story. I should also mention that the night before, I served for shabbas dinner: hallah bread, white wine, homemade french onion soup, potatoes, carrots and a whole roasted chicken with rosemary, thyme and sage. The whole thing looked like a painting by Christopher Flodberg. I will admit the gravy was a complete failure: I accidentally grabbed the ground cloves instead of pepper. Perfect I am not, but James takes culinary imperfection to a whole new level. Coming straight from The Chicken's beak:

A common reaction from people who don’t understand something is to belittle it, and my wife Janet is no exception when it comes to my cooking technique. Case in point: my ongoing study of omelettes. For the past month or so on Saturday mornings, it’s been my appointed task to cook omelettes for the two of us. Not coincidentally, this means that Janet gets to spend some extra time sleeping in while I slave away in front of the stove. I actually don’t mind too much because I get to indulge my whims and curiosity without The Wife looking over my shoulder at every turn and bossing me around.

A lot of people have compared a kitchen to a laboratory, and I’m inclined to agree. In my laboratory there’s all these neat bottles of reagents, catalysts, and solvents and the mark of any chemist worth his NaCl is the burning question: “what happens when I add these things together?”. A kitchen is no different. When you consider all the meat, fruits, veggies, and spices we have available in our well-stocked kitchen (a far cry from my bachelor pad in Cambridge, I’ll admit) what self-respecting chemist wouldn’t get excited about all the culinary possibilities?
About a month ago I was charged with the task of making my first omelette. My advice from Janet was the following: “Beat some eggs, add milk, cheese and veggies”. Then she went back to sleep. After I beat the four eggs, chopped up the necessary veggies, and prepared a small pile of yummy salty Bulgarian cheese, I was faced with a question: How much milk to add? I wasn’t sure. I settled on a nice even number: one cup. As was described here earlier, the result was a very pouffy culinary masterpiece, albeit admittedly somewhat difficult to flip. “Wow!” I thought. “Look at the effect of adding all that milk! I made a soufflé! That’s really cool!” Excitedly, I roused Janet from her slumber.

“You added HOW much milk?”, she growled.

“One cup”, I said.

Several minutes later, after she picked her jaw from off the floor and wiped away the tears of laughter, she went and wrote a blog post about how dumb I was in the kitchen. Welcome to my life, dear reader.

The next week I was excited about another omelette adventure. OK, I thought. One cup was too much. What if I add about a quarter of that. The result was similar: quite pouffy, albeit a bit more easily handled. Janet ate the omelette, but added plenty of ketchup.
In the kitchen this Saturday morning I decided to go the full monty (figuratively, not literally – don’t worry) and add no milk at all. If I was really doing careful kitchen science I would have kept all the variables the same. But life is short, and you don’t get to cook multiple omelettes in the kitchen the way you can set up multiple reactions in the lab. So I changed two variables at once. After adding the chopped up peppers, I decided to go out on a limb and add another component: strawberries. Strawberries are pretty yummy after all.

My strawberry omelette went rather well in fact. I noticed that it wasn’t pouffy at all, and it flipped very nicely. When it was done, I gave Janet an excited high-five. “Wow chicken!” she exclaimed. But as she looked past the stove to the countertop, her smile quickly faded.

“Did you add strawberries?”.
“Yep”, I said.
She was silent, her eyes wide open, staring at the omelette.
“Is that bad?” I asked.

The result, as usual, was peals of laughter and having to endure about fifteen minutes of wife-ly haranguing about what a bad cook I am. Apparently adding strawberries to omelettes is a big faux pas. Well how was I supposed to know about that dumb rule? Since she refused to eat her portion, I had to eat the whole strawberry omelette, OK, I’ll it wasn’t the best omelette I’d ever had, but whatever. What’s the point of having all these ingredients if you don’t experiment and add new ingredients together? If you ask me, I think she is trapped in her little world of strict by-the-book cooking, while I am exploring bold new realms of gastronomic adventure. I am already excitedly planning my next omelette experiment.

Disposable Nation

I can understand Kosher rules. It seems like a lot of rules that make sense in a food-safety way. Whereas in main stream Canadian society we entrust government inspection agents to regulate and inspect our food sources, in kosher Judaism, that task is entrusted to specially trained Rabbis. Considering how long the Jews have been around, that means that they have had food inspection agents for thousands of years. Amazing stuff.

The kosherness can run very deep into many aspects of preparing and serving food that you wouldn’t first think about. At one of those dinners with the friendly Haredi folks next door back in November, when I had milk in my post dinner tea the plastic disposable table cloth cover was pushed back because meat had been served on it.

There is an unfortunate consequence of these rules in modern Israeli society: the excessive use of disposable tableware. It is the convenient answer to any situation where there is a mix of different types and levels of observation- which is almost every social function in Israel and every workplace kitchenette. Above is a picture of a large store by the market with a frontage of probably four to five times that of the hardware, kitchenware, and shoe stores nearby. This busy spot is completely dedicated to disposable plates, cutlery, napkins, tablecloths, cups, etc. to supply the Israeli public’s desire for convenience and commitment to kosherness.

When I first moved here, I asked the foreign post doc advisor where was a good place to by cheap kitchen stuff. She suggested that an inexpensive and convenient option was to use disposable plates etc. for two years. I politely suggested that we preferred real plates but was secretly horrified. I should also tell you that this is a country that only recycles beer bottles, plastic pop bottles and newspaper- nothing else.

My inner tree hugger finds it hypocritical to be so dedicated to God’s rules on food and yet so disrespectful to God’s creation. I will admit to my own hypocrisy, even as I write this post, I know I have nursed on my fair share of Tim Horton’s cups when I could have washed out a mug. They say that Tim’s cups are responsible for 22% of Nova Scotia’s litter and I don’t even want to think about how many more go in to the landfill. Tim’s cups are our corresponding repugnant habit in Canadian society. Except we don’t have God to blame. We are just plain lazy.

Get off your butt and use a reusable mug.

A crazy week

Sorry I dropped off the face of the world this week, folks.
It has been a crazy week, with some very bad lows and some big highs. So I will update you on the news.

Earlier this week, after 92 years of living, my grandmother passed away peacefully. I spent good chunks of my childhood summers on the farm as her small shadow and I am very grateful for these memories. I will miss her dearly but I am thankful for the many years we did have together. My family is currently scattered to the four corners of the world making our grief even more difficult. We have decided to hold off and have a memorial service for her in the spring- likely around Easter when we can gather everyone together. In a way, I am glad for the delay. The edge will be taken off the grief and then the service will be what it should for a such a long, well-lived life: a celebration.

Because of this news, I basically spent a couple of work days just hoping for them to be over. I have also put in a couple of late evenings this week trying to figure out just what the heck these cool looking particles I made are. This will take all of my chemistry tricks-of-the-trade to figure this one out.

Today was my first training session on the High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscope (HR-TEM). I have been wanting to learn this technique for years. To put it in non-nanoist terms, it is similar to getting to drive my father- in-law’s prized 1967 Lotus convertible. I have put in my years of driving my mom’s Plymouth Acclaim (i.e. the low res TEM) and now I have been given the keys to the sports car. YIPPIE!

Last but definitely not least, The Chicken got some very exciting news this week. He has had a paper accepted for publication in a Very Big Journal (but I am not allowed to say which one). We went for beer and kosher pizza to celebrate. The pizza joint was a real mom-and-pop gem with the English version of the menu being a highlight. We could have ordered pizza with brokoly or even eggplanet. We decided on pineapple, green peppers and, of course, lots of mushrooms in recognition of the chemical achievement that got the paper: total synthesis of a fungal metabolite, or as I like to describe it: he made fungus poo.

If you are wondering what kosher pizza entails, you can say goodbye to pork products such as pepperoni, ham, and since there is cheese, any meat at all for that matter. Despite this, the pizza pie was still damn tasty.

For Grandma who is now shelling peas on the verandah with Grandpa.

Good night, sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite.
For if you do, they will turn you black and blue,
And that will be the end of you!

Irsaeli Chemists and Hockey

Wow. Israeli chemists are just like Montreal Canadiens fans. Habs fans know what good hockey is and they want to see it. Israeli chemists know what good science is and they want to see it.

I just came back from a talk where if there was a tomato in the room, it would have been thrown. You may speculate that this was a response to an extraordinarily bad talk, but almost every talk I go to here is like that. Tough, tough, crowd. There is one prof who, I swear, has sharpened dentures for biting a hunk out of visiting speakers. They interrupt, ruin your scientific punch lines and even, that’s right, tell you in front of everyone that your research is based on “the greatest scientific failure of the last thirty years.” Ouch. And really, his talk wasn't that bad. Even the profs in my thesis defense were less aggressive. If I ever give a talk here, remind me to wear a Habs jersey and full hockey gear for protection.

Evil Alter Egos

On Friday night, I had a run in with The Chicken’s evil alter ego. Sir Snoresalot only comes out at night but since we have moved away from old moldy cottages, cigarette smoke and eau-de-cat filled houses he has not really been around much at all.

James’ allergies were probably acting up since that day we had dusted and swept the house which had gone two weeks without a cleaning. Last Saturday I had a wicked tummy ache and really couldn’t have cared less at the time. On top of that, earlier in the week we had one of those super eerie Jerusalem mornings. If you look out our bedroom window across the city it looks as though a fog has rolled in. A fine dust from the Judean Desert hangs in the warm air, which starts in earnest about 10 km away from us. Unlike fog, which burns off in the mid day sun, the desert dust leaves a thin layer of red on everything making frequent dusting and sweeping a domestic necessity.

About two a.m. I gave up battling with Sir Snoresalot and folded myself up like an accordion on the love seat in the living room. As a consequence, I had lots of dreams about canoeing. Despite the great dreams, I woke up in a real snit and the day kept getting worse and worse. The claws of the sleep deprived Hen were out in full force and I treated James abhorredly even though there is nothing he can do about his alter ego. Perhaps I have an alter ego myself: Crank-a-ma-saurus- rex.

Canoeing. Ahhh. I miss the woods. I want to hit the trees like you wouldn’t believe. I always feel this way when I am upset.