What Next?

I'm honestly not sure what to do with this blog.

Obviously, I'm not diligent about posting witty, erudite and captivating anecdotes about my life here... nor tedious, maudlin and petty ones.

I've toyed with the idea before of turning it into a full-blown photo blog, and the idea has even more appeal now that I've taken a look at Dodge's rather nice iPhone photos, but I doubt there would be much appeal. Photo blogs from professional photographers are good to look at; from amateurs, not so much, most of the time.

I also don't maintain another blog, as some of you know, called Life Science Tools of the Trade, which I inherited from three other co-authors who quite rightly bailed on it as a bad job, going on, in at least one case, to bigger and better things.

Hm... there's also the poetry blog, which is looking similarly un-used. Really, the only site of mine that's getting a workout is my Flickr account, bits of which show up here, from time to time.

A funk. That's what it is, a creative funk. Must be.

Anyway, suggestions on a postcard, please, to the usual place. In the meantime, as is my wont, here's a picture of something colourful and tilted, and of course, one of a car.

San Francisco

This is a confusing place.

Here, there's a blend, a mixture, a complete mélange, of different things. The Ferrari Store is just around the corner from a gentleman who would like your spare change. "Chagall, Matisse, Picasso" proclaims a sign - but is there anyone nearby who can buy?

My own hotel, the Hilton Union Square, is fairly opulent, although like the other San Francisco hotel I've stayed in, has tiny, noisy rooms. And it's just down the street, in either direction, from serious dives - hotels that look more populated by drug addicts, crack whores and other similar characters, than reasonably well-heeled scientific tourists such as myself.

Even the restaurants are a confusing mess - sushi, presumably affordable; burger joints, with tasty offerings at a reasonable price; over-the-top bistros and diners that no self-respecting, publicly-funded science geek would ever be able to afford.

It's an interesting city, this San Francisco, I'll give you that - hills a-plenty, the harbour, historic sights. But somehow, oddly, it doesn't really seem like a Pacific Coast settlement. The shore is commercial, to be sure, and full of people fishing, gulls preening, sea lions fishing, pelicans dive-bombing - but somehow, it's not marine.

It's an odd place, San Francisco, but all that said, one, I think, I could get used to. If I had the inclination, the mobility, and of course, the disposable income. For now, though, I think I'll hold steady just north of Toronto, and retain this town as an unusual, puzzling, tourist attraction.

San Francisco, earlier

Hi all. I'm back safely from San Francisco, where the weather was pleasant, the hills were steep, and the Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill were raucous.

My first day, I had a couple of extra hours to spare, and hiked from my hotel (which, although very swishy, didn't have a room ready for me just then) over to Telegraph Hill, a distance of a couple of kilometres or so, to peer at the attractive Coit Tower. A note to potential tourists: the hills are absolutely brutal to walk. Take the tram instead.



The view from the hill is rather nice, with the bay, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate bridge and various other landmarks in plain sight.



But - and here's the highlight - being a big fan of both the book and the film about said parrots, I was resolved to find the famous Greenwich Steps, hike down them looking for the house where Mark Bittner lived, met and cared for the parrot flock, and see if the birds themselves were in evidence.

Finding the Greenwich Steps turned out to be remarkably easy:



This, I'm pretty sure, is the house in question, hidden among the leaves, about halfway down the steps to the base of the hill.



And this, my friends, is a big green tree that was squawking a lot more than trees usually do. A great big flock of what are predominantly Cherry-Headed Conures was in there, and I caught a few glimpses of them wheeling around between trees. As one might expect of parrots, they're very noisy, very fast fliers, and darned near impossible to see once they alight in the foliage.



All in all, a thorough success, I'd say.

More photos in the San Francisco set.

You are on some road

[This post was written yesterday, on a plane. I've stolen the title from a Susan Musgrave poem.]

And so am I, metaphorically. I’m on the way to San Francisco, a city I’ve only visited once, for dinner. I’ll be delivering a blockbuster (hm, strange, as I typed that my fingers wanted to type something like “bollocks” – I hope that’s not prophetic) lecture tomorrow morning.

But for now, here I am sitting once again in the departure lounge at gate 151 of Lester B. Pearson International, airport code YYZ. Fortunately, the weather is a bit nicer than the last time I was here. Behind me, someone talking on his phone about how he’s off to an Apple conference, how Steve Jobs will be giving the keynote lecture, and how he’s burned a bunch of installation CDs for OS 10.whatever. Perhaps someone should let Mr. Jobs know.

But not me. I’m off to another conference, provocatively entitled “Beyond Genome – Tools to Therapies”, where I will talk about a) the genome, rather than anything that might be “beyond” it, and b) nothing to do with therapies for disease. But it should be fun, and a colleague and collaborator of mine is giving the talk right after mine. Monday morning, 11:15 AM Pacific Time, I will manifestly fail to change the course of scientific research and discovery. But it should be well-received, and I’m looking forward to it.

I don’t do enough of this, lecturing about science, these days. My own personal road has taken me in different directions, but now I find myself back in a research setting and liking it again. I’ve even managed to put the finishing touches on a scientific manuscript that I sent to the editors of the journal in question last week. That will be my first publication since 2006, which those of you in the academic world will recognize as a very low rate. There might be more of this in the future, though, which could be fun. Putting these things together, especially with a veritable host of co-authors, collaborators and hangers-on, can be a bit of an irritating challenge, but the end result, seeing the discoveries in print for the rest of the scientific community to read, is eminently gratifying. It will, ultimately, join my other publications in such esoteric journals as Cytogenetics and Cell Genetics, the European Molecular Biology Organization journal, and Genomics. Don't get all excited, now.

I’d better wrap up – these whimsical posts of mine tend to ramble a bit, and I’ll be boarding soon. In a few hours I’ll be in San Francisco, which is currently a pleasant ten degrees cooler than Toronto.

See you then.