Yes, today is my birthday, but not one that the future of brand on fire in my stem cells. This week like this a year ago I came to this land of Teutonic. I told here more or less absurd incidents and / or comic of the early days and months, but after a year in Germany, and although I am not given to making statements, today I'm going to make the experience here, trying to leave out of anger episodes our future situation and using accumulated anecdotes and incidents in recent months. Note, however, to take stock for someone with mental imbalances transient (how could it be otherwise in this blog) is not easy.
Language, is the first thing you and through you contact him. Anyone who has spent some time in his life in a foreign country whose language they know, know what it feels like an asshole. Here, and in my case twice, first, that although in English (if the mine can call it) is run, around here you realize that anyone speaks English street light years ahead of you since ( passer to your boss, which in Spain does not happen in the vast majority of cases). And then, because every time you want to order a loaf in his own Germanic language (which for a course that takes 6 months), and you learn the phrase, intonation, and the twelve possible answers, you go to the bakery, ask the bread and bread rather than receive, or an automatic change to the English shopkeeper, or at least sometimes, a question of the shopkeeper / her assistant youngster asking if he speaks English well, that I attend (and speak bakery because the times I've had this happen, the experiment under the same conditions, is a statistic that exceeds the most demanding test). This means that the only way forward is feeling asshole over and over again until you lose the shame of it all, and are able to talk to your boss from an Excel file with data from the last experiment, where you refer to an excel sheet as "shit" (shit) instead of "sheet" (sheet) (okay, the data were shit, but they are forms, dammit ...). However, since the first contact, you realize that, despite everything, people with whom I have dealt with are polite, friendly and helpful, and most will understand or seek to understand you the wrong way to explain yourself. Either way, these absurd thoughts aloud, who both gave the game to liven up the boring old days of mini or maxipreps seasoned with a gel, are lost. And those that do very yours saying attributed to many, but that seems to come from Arab wisdom, which says: "If you ever open your mouth, your words are worth more than silence."
After things how are you come to the conclusion of one: what they would teach English Costao conditions (like here do), and two, that if you go postdoc morally unscathed, albeit with no result in "paper", personally, can give you satisfied.
not go much in the stock weather, which although important in the mood for it and the pages devoted to this purpose. Suffice it to say that even I, who am of Teruel, I run to get the horns in the sun when it peeks even timidly. Moving on scientific and "laboratoril", the first thing that struck me (apart from the economic capital invested in research, which is brutal) is that there are mixed techniques and more expensive machines with less expensive procedures, manuals and rudimentary, always seeking balance between production, cost and environmental pollution. As an example, if in a laboratory (one, of the University, with 20 people at most) is to buy two fluorescence microscopes (between the two, more than 300,000 Euros) as purchased, together with HPLC and other serenade expensive and useful gadgets. But yes, pipettes bacterial and yeast cultures, glass and autoclavable, and minipreps made as before, without plastic columns, and phenols, and nothing more polluting than EDTA (protocol of 14 steps and more than 1 hour and 30 min. for 12 minipreps). I have not stopped to review the budgets of fungible (material disposable), but the modus operandi is also reflected in the behavior and social functioning administrative and general. This leaves the impression that by being "forraos" paste to the ceiling, do not waste if it can be avoided. This denotes a personal and institutional responsibility that I have not seen too much out previously.
Another surprisingly large capital invested in science is human capital. Figures do not know beyond that in recent weeks have appeared in the English press. They spoke of the number of highly qualified personnel needed Germany to meet their needs and demand abroad. At the restaurant's playful comparative example the following situation. Years, not many, I was happily secure my brand new bike to any insurer that abound in our cities. When the profession I wonder where I worked (pre-doctoral researcher), after my response, my partner looked at me in amazement and wonder (like seeing a Martian Cassiopeia), after seconds of silence he said: "That's what ? "and I said scientific research, to which he replied:" I have many years making policies, and I swear that I never crossed with that profession. " Well then, when after 5 months here, I crossed half of Europe in I no longer new, nor brand bike, and I'm exposed to the same situation (this time at an insurance company with an unpronounceable name), give to the same question the same answer, and instead of receiving looks (that's is a freak) receive an automatic discount on the policy to be part of the scientific university. And I say, if you have a discount for that ... "Joer" is that here is like me in abundance. And indeed, not a week that I turn in the city with someone I know, even light, my body of research at the university.
Another thing quite bizarre to close my eyes accustomed to working in a laboratory with a density similar personal the mass density of a white dwarf was found laboratories where to go to work, you must first do a marathon under two hours. They are so big that I have legs like those of Indurain from walking every time I forget to take the pipette to load a gel (I'm going to patent the waist belt, biochemistry laboratory version, such as construction workers but adapted for research personnel used a small laboratoires). After spending years experimenting and carrying the westerns as if we were playing "twister" or houses of cards, this Labora-stage at first seemed to release steric, in fact no longer so cool. Personal interaction (for better and for worse) falls exponentially with distance. Silence, no comment or laughing or crying, people go, but the lack of a language common fluid, and less likely "interacionil" of the Nordic and Asian ends up making a dent in someone who has spent 5 years without knowing if the arm he came out of the armpit was his or one of his colleagues. The good part is that now there is nobody to hear me swear in Hebrew Teruel that shakes the pillars of the earth, and if by chance someone comes along ... for it is precisely that, Hebrew, so there is no terror in their faces .
know already, is vox populi , the German grid procedure, which has as one of its results, very commendable indeed, its superb engineering. Everything is planned, nothing is left to the dedicated improvisation in which Latinos are so adept. At first it seemed that they were so squared. But one day when, despite having a workbench as big as a tanker, filled it with potions, gadgets and potions, I discovered (by the pressing need for space for one of these experiments interspersed always come at an inconvenient time) that under my bed, huge wardrobe cabinet, had wheels, ruedassss!. So I shed the shank, and magically appeared 3 / 4 parts of bed for experiments in bulk. Throughout the day, everyone who passed, from the newest to the oldest, broke his silence with hallucination exclaiming: "Was ist Das?! Guaaaa an extra place to work ... great !!!". Yes, nobody had thought before, not lack of intelligence, that's for sure, but for lack of need (they do not overlap are experiments, and not because they do not), and moreover, the drawer was designed to be under the bed, not as a stadium-sized round table. What would say if they saw how sujetábamos maxiprep columns, there where I come from? 
But what fascinated me most was basically between these observations has been ... the virtual absence of Geeks!, yes ... no geeks ... Where are the lab geeks so widespread in the few small English laboratories. Those partners with strange hobbies that are not widespread among the majority of the population. Those who write blogs more or less serious, silly. Those people who talk among experiments, or in coffee (I said I did not talk much, but among them whether spoken, or broadcast strange noises) of unlikely subjects. At first I thought yes I'd freak, what happened was that he did not know what they said then, not differentiated. But when after a few months German language course, pay attention, only hear conversations, if not experimental tasks revolve around, revolve around football, holiday weekend, beer, or purchases, and sometimes women, or timeliness ( elections, nuclear, soccer, weather ...). Where are those posters, banners, drawings and short written and hilarious that I have often seen in laboratories that have trodden before. Where is the wallpaper of your colleague was doing Kung-Fu, with the yin-yang ball as a logo or banner. Where are these gowns tuneadas as if it were a Harley. Where are those colleagues who visit websites of foreign content is not pornographic. Here I have not seen any of my colleagues outside of strictly scientific pages ... tion, yes, my colleague Schneider (bright 26-year doctoral student who sits at my side, separated by five feet of table), which as I've seen him 2 times a week, is to visit their facebook for 3 minutes at the most, or a motorcycle spares page another 5 min. We are 20, and only one, forcing the situation that would class as a geek (and I do not get as geek or the sole, and that I'm only amateur compared with other ... ahem, ahem), his sin is that it has a legion of carnivorous plants at home and plays the trombone. If geeks are hidden, not displayed in the workplace, which leads me to reappoint the seriousness of these people, I say no more professional or more workers (the volume of work per person, not time used, is practically the same thing I've seen before in other laboratories), I just think that separate the different aspects of life in a way that freaks me out, and even though I try I can not abide. It is neither better nor worse, is different. So I would say, as I think, after a year of postdoc, that experience has been good, and to some extent talking idiomáticamemte enriching. It is true, you learn new techniques and others are repeated but with different adjustments also work (or not). But so far (just one day I despise), I see it shows that justifies that belief is so widespread that after foreign postdoctoral scientist is more valid than one that is stuck in your country. And still less, this type of postdoc is erected as essential premise in almost all offers or scholarships for postdocs who want to work in your country. Perhaps this was useful in a global world as the 20 -40 years ago, (not like that he lives in our generation) which leave the country meant to see the world completely hidden, and also access to the bases of development science and technology had not yet fully come to Spain. I think we had the good fortune to acquire this global knowledge site (for lack of ease with the language), and for us the rich experience was a postdoc at the time of our parents, it is much less.
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