(New Jersey, via) New York

Amy, Micah and I went to New York, New York last week. We flew into LaGuardia Airport, which is almost impossible to say without an American accent. We were actually on our way to New Jersey for the 2nd International Conference on Duckweed Research and Applications (which I will review in full soon). We took the New York Airporter into the city. Driving through the city, I felt a little claustrophobic; everything was so close together, as if it had been crammed in by a toddler who wants to take all his toys on holiday. We also saw eight Starbucks in the space of two blocks, which, considering the working population of NYC, is probably not enough at 11 on a Monday morning.

The first thing that hit us when we stepped off the bus, was the pungent smell of body odor. There were other smells mixed in, but the overwhelming smell was BO. We caught the bus from NYC to New Brunswick, NJ where my conference was to be held. For reasons that sound boring when written down (believe me, I got bored reading the first draft of this), catching the bus was confusing and annoying, but we got to the Hilton in East Brunswick in the end.

Despite what people say, NJ is actually OK. The part we stayed in was certainly less crowded, and a good deal more friendly, than NY. The problem is, it's kind of boring from a tourist's point of view. Not much to see or do. We stood on Wall St. though.





















On the last day after the conference had finished, we went out to dinner at a really good falafel place.

This sign pretty accurately describes what happened when I ate some of their hot sauce on my falafel.

The next day we took the train back to NYC to spend the day there before flying back to St. Paul that evening. We first headed for the Empire State building, carefully avoiding the spruikers and scalpers. One stopped us and tried to sell us VIP tickets to the Empire State building for almost double the normal price. We didn't take his offer. And we got up to the top with very little wait time (less than 15 min from entering the door to reaching the observation deck).

It's an impressive building, and an even more impressive view from the top.

 I got in a bit of trouble for doing this. But Micah enjoyed it while it lasted.

The only problem was that we had all our bags and it was very crowded on the observation deck.

After visiting the Empire State building, we set off down 5th Ave to find Central Park, sans map. How hard could it be? After many hours of walking we admitted defeat. We couldn't find it and one of the wheels on my suitcase broke, making it increasingly difficult to drag along. But on our way we accidentally stumbled across the New York Library, Rockefeller plaza, Hell's Kitchen, Time's Square and Broadway! This more than made up for the constant smell of BO.

Weird Foods II: Kraft Easy Cheese

It's that time again. Time to try a weird American food. This time, we look at Kraft Easy Cheese.

We tried it on crackers. It felt weird spraying cheese onto crackers. Also, the fact it can be stored at room temperature made us wonder about the preservative content.

But, it was actually pretty good. It was quite similar to Kraft plastic cheese. Only more gooey. The cheddar taste was fairly mild, but not unpleasant.

In terms of taste and texture, We give it a solid thumbs up.


But considering the fact that this can cost around $4 and there are a variety of relatively inexpensive and tasty cheeses available, Easy Cheese just seems kind of pointless.

Weird foods: Baker's Treat Apple Pie

America has many weird foods. I think some of them should not even be classified as food (e.g. spray cheese). However, Amy and I plan to sample as many of these as we can during our time here.

For the first installment, we tried Baker's Treat Apple Pie (Single Serving).

It looked kind of nice on the packet. A bit like McDonald's apple pies. But this product is weird in several ways. First of all, there is the fact it is sold in a cardboard box and can be kept unrefrigerated for almost a month. Then, there are the ingredients: Enriched flour, high fructose corn syrup, water, palm oil & fractionated palm oil, sugar, evaporated apples, contains less than 2% of each of the following: food starch modified, salt, preservatives, corn starch, xanthan gum, wheat flour, malted barley flour, cinnamon, dextrose, propylene glycol, calcium carbonate, agar, natural flavors, mono- & diglycerides, sorbitan monostearate and soy lecithin. Flour and HFCS; mmm...sounds delicious.

We put the box in the microwave, as per the instructions.

It was kind of soggy and did not look appetizing when we removed it.

I managed one bite, which is more than Amy managed. It just tasted like extremely sweet, slimy shortcrust pastry, with a slight cinnamon aftertaste.

I think High Fructose Corn Syrup Pie might be a more accurate description. I only found about five pieces of apple in the whole thing.

Facilities Mismanagement

The University of Minnesota has a lot of turf grass. Actually, they don't just have a lot, they have an awful lot. I don't know numerically how much it is, but just look at this map. Most of what you see in light green is grass. Grass that is perfectly manicured. Grass that I see being tended every day I go to work. Grass that is resown every spring, regularly fertilized, watered and aerated, and mowed at least once a week. This is a very costly waste of time. Especially when there are so many other nice ground covers that don't need so much primping and preening. I can only imagine what else could be done with the money that is used to maintain lawns.

And the worst part is, most students don't arrive until autumn, so all this effort is really only appreciated for a couple of months, before it's covered in snow.

A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to Work Today

Well, it wasn't funny at the time.

I walked out the front door to our apartment complex into the overcast and humid morning. Rain seemed possible, but I was already about 20 metres from the door so I decided not to go back for my umbrella. I caught the bus as I normally do. About 15 minutes into the bus trip more clouds began to appear and in a few minutes it was as dark as night. A few seconds later, it began to rain. Heavily. This was not just a shower. This was movie rain. Complete with thunder. This was The Matrix Revolutions rain. It was so heavy the bus roof began to leak just minutes after it started.

The rain was still pouring down when the bus arrived at my stop. I stepped off the bus onto the footpath, but I may as well have stepped into a swimming pool. I was drenched within 10 seconds. Then the pedestrian crossing light took forever to change. Fortunately there was a nice Minnesotan who let me share his umbrella until the light changed; after which, I tried, unsuccessfully, to leap the small pond that had formed in front of the curb, and ran for it. It was about a 200 metre sprint, with a laptop backpack. It was pretty pointless though; everything was soaked. Dripping, I walked up to my office, praying my computer hadn't got wet. Thankfully it had stayed dry in my backpack.

I, on the other hand, was completely soaked. How was I going to get any work done like this? I was tempted to just leave my computer there, walk out in the pouring rain and wait for then next bus to take me home. But then I had an idea.

I borrowed a co-worker's umbrella and walked down to the gym. I used their swim suit drying machine (read: large mechanical salad spinner) to get rid of the water out of most of my clothes. But my socks were still damp. And so were my shorts. So I took these items back to the lab, and dried them in the lab drying oven.

A Flawed System.

On Wednesday we drove to the supermarket to pick up some milk, flour and coffee. This would not be a blogworthy happening, except we haven't been able to drive for the past four months!

Let me tell you the epic tale of the elusive Minnesota driver's license. I had to take two tests. The written and the road tests. I passed the written test the first time I took it. I somehow got an appointment for the road test two weeks later. I failed. Driving on the right side of the road was just too weird. I still hadn't adjusted in the 3 weeks since we had arrived. We were really wanted to get a car, so we could actually get around; we thought maybe we could just drive using our Australian licenses. Were we in for a shock. While Australian licenses are valid over here (so long as your visa is valid) getting insurance is a pain. There is no MAIB premium included in vehicle registration, and auto insurance is big business. You must have a minimum level of liability cover, which can make the premiums pretty high, but insurance agents offer discounts on your premium for all manner of things: being married, having a PhD, having a less-expensive car; but a foreign license has the opposite effect. We found a car and we were seriously considering buying, so we went to see an insurance agent. He gave us a quote of $200 per month. Not something we could really afford on a postdoc salary. So in mid-April I booked another road test. For May 31st. That was the earliest I could book it. It was such a long way off and life without a car in the Twin Cities is pretty is so annoying that I thought I should just try going without an appointment; people sometimes don't show up or cancel their appointments and I had heard that you can sometimes get in, if you get there early enough. Our friend Chet took me around 10 AM. But upon arrival Chet discovered he didn't have his proof of insurance in his car, so I couldn't take the test that day. The next week My boss's wife, Sue, kindly offered to take me around 9 AM. That wasn't early enough; the 'no-appointment' lane at the DVS was completely full. The next week Chet took me at 6:40 AM (the DVS doesn't open until 8 AM) and we were still 8th in line. We waited. And waited. By 11:30 AM only two of the no-appointment drivers had been tested. We gave up.

I ended up taking my test on May 31st and I passed! I got my temporary license and some of our friends from Church gave us their car (we changed the title over using my temporary license and a few other bits of paperwork). Then I tried to get insurance. After many hours on the internet, many emails and many phone calls, I discovered that it's not possible to get insurance using a temporary license. The insurance companies are very particular about having an actual license number, which was nowhere to be seen on my temporary license. So we waited a further three weeks and my license finally arrived on Tuesday and I bought auto insurance on Wednesday. Then we drove the the supermarket to celebrate.

ASMS 2013: A review

For the past week I have been at the American Society of Mass Spectrometry Annual Conference in Minneapolis. It was held at the Minneapolis Convention Center, which is a very nice location. Minneapolis is actually kind of impressive.

It's not very big though, which I found surprising considering the population.
The conference itself was pretty good. I learned a lot from my weekend short course, entitled 'Mass Analyzers: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know But Didn't Know Who to Ask'.

However, I found the Oral Sessions somewhat frustrating/boring. Most of the presenters at this conference seemed to see mass spectrometers as an end in themselves. Many of the talks followed this format:

1. We got some samples from somewhere. It doesn't really matter where.
2. We analyzed them using a clever mass spec technique or new instrumentation.
3. We got awesome separation and identified lots of metabolites/proteins. We don't care what their functions are.

I only care about mass spectrometry inasmuch as it can answer interesting biological questions. Instrumentation is interesting to a point, but it's just a tool to me.

Nevertheless I learned a lot. And there were quite a few talks that actually applied mass spectrometry to some interesting questions. And many of the posters were actually interesting.

But one of the great things about this conference was all the free stuff. Each evening the mass spectrometry corporations put on 'hospitality suites', which are kind of hard to explain. They were held in the Hilton Hotel and the best way to describe it I think is 'night clubs, with free alcohol and food and mass spectrometers as part of the decor'.

Here are some guys making blueberry martinis through an ice-sculpture.

And Waters Corporation had a game show.

Freebies abounded at all of these events.

All of these corporations also put on free breakfast seminars to tell you about their new technology and why it was the best. And to make you have positive mental associations with their company.

This is what I ended up with.

So now I have a lot of free corporate-branded stuff and a head exploding with mass spectrometry. Awesome.