Well thanks to Knirirr for perpetrating the blog equivalent of a chain letter on me by requesting that I not only reveal 7 interesting and random facts about myself, but then exhort 7 other people to do the same thing. Interesting information is largely subjective, so if you don’t find the following 7 points of interest, I’m sorry, but not entirely surprised.
1) My favourite place in the world is Miyajima Island, which has such an uninspiring Wikipedia entry that I won’t even link to it.
It’s no secret that I love Japan and have been lucky enough to visit twice, and this is my favourite place in my favourite foreign country. Miyajima is home to beautiful shrines – both Shinto and Buddhist, the most impressive torii, free roaming deer, lushly forested peaks, monkeys – and I want to go back there. Right now. It’s pointless trying to talk about the place without gushing, just go and have a look at some pictures and marvel.
2) I could turn vegetarian tomorrow with no regrets.
I don’t eat much meat these days, the by-product of my girlfriend being of the ‘don’t eat meat’ persuasion. When you live with a vegetarian, you don’t get much leeway in what gets cooked for dinner. Consequently my cookery skills with meat are lapsing, but my repertoire of vegetarian dishes grows ever larger. Those who know me well know that I indulge in meat when I eat out with great relish, but after 18 months of living together, if I had to turn vegetarian tomorrow I could do it. Liking tofu and the existence of Quorn products, does make this more tolerable I admit. Mycoprotein FTW.
3) If I hadn’t been a biologist I would have been an archaeologist.
Ideally I would have been an astrophysicist, but my maths would never have been good enough for that I fear. Now I cohabit with an archaeologist and can live the dream vicariously!
4) I don’t worry about the threat of terrorism.
For someone who grew up convinced the world was going to end in an apocalyptic blast of ‘mutually assured’ atomic destruction, worrying about a handful of nutters with amateur skills they’ve gleaned from the Anarchist Cookbook doesn’t seem like a productive use of my fear glands. And no amount of governmental fear-mongering is going to change that.
5) I’m one half of an NT/AS relationship.
I’m the NT part. This means I’m a neurotypical person, but my girlfriend has Asperger’s Syndrome (AS). I think this is a relatively rare situation as male Aspies outnumber female ones by 10:1. It annoys me intensely when I hear people say how they ‘wish they had Asperger’s’ because they think it would confer some ubergeekesque affinity with maths or technology. Asperger’s is a fascinating part of the autistic spectrum from a scientific point of view, but I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. I blog about this pseudonymously elsewhere.
6) My proudest scientific and career moment was having my PhD work (and very first paper) published in Nature.
Just don’t ever ask me about the way the author list is ordered. It’s a shame that it was the result of the worst four years of my professional life (even though my first post-doc was nothing to shout about either). I still love developmental biology, and think it’s still the most fascinating and beautiful field in the biological sciences. I’m happy to be a bioinformatician now – the lab bench probably wasn’t for me and I’m glad it only took 6 years to realise that.
7) My current off-beat side interest is in DIYbio.
The idea of part-time geneticists and amateur molecular biologists working in their homes in the same way that amateur astronomers, or coders or electronics engineers is genuinely exciting to me. In the last couple of weeks DIYbio has had press all over the place from AP and New Scientist. If you’ve ever had the hankering to build your own electrophoresis apparatus at home, then this is the community to join. The mailing list is also loaded with iGEM participants, which is always interesting.
OK so I suggest that the following 7 people might like to offer me insights into their life! Simon at Fuzzier Logic, Ally at The Mind Wobbles, Frank at peanutbutter, Phil at An Exercise In Irrelevance, Nic at Dropbars, Jen at Genes and Aging and Simon at Stumbling Towards Something. The last two are merely a hint to the authors to start blogging again. That’s about all the people I personally know blogging, although I was tempted to fill this with friendfeed contacts instead :)
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I had to find some means of encouraging you to make some more posts. ;-)
It’s one of my new years resolutions really, I have a blog incubator full of half thought out post ideas, just need to get down and start writing them. I did enjoy this exercise though – spent a lot of this morning thinking about what I could say :)
Challenge accepted Dr Swan :)
(When I actually have time to write the post that is…)
Re – no more meat. I did the fillet steak with blue cheese and mushroom sauce for Sarah and her father the other day; went down a storm. I really can’t imagine you giving up “2 minutes on either side”
haha Jamie.. yes.. well that steak still occupies a spot in my top 5 culinary experiences, it was just so so so good :)
ROTFL hehehehe
1. I think about becoming a vegetarian too, although it would be a real trouble due to the wife and kids. I also like mozzarella, provolone and eggs. This does not kill the cows and chickens right /;-) I seriously love sea food and salmon. As for the rest of meat, I can live without it easily. By the way, I read somewhere that there was some fish-based ingredient at Guiness hehehehe
2. I thought it was just me who were growing up with the nuclear holocaust in mind while my friends were happily living and enjoying their teens :-)
3. When I was 16 I told my parents I was going to be a an Archeologist too. By knowing later that there was no good university in Brazil that had Archeology, I changed to History. But today I regret being an Electrical Engineer, would love to be a Physics Major or Computer Scientist. Well, I am a programmer right now so I am not that far.
4. My proudest moment is when I see my old kid handle the PC and learning to use it by him self ( he is 6 and he´s done it since 3 ) and the young one following his steps. Ok, they are both quite good with girls too.
5. I am getting old but I dig dragons, sci-fi and fantasy, I still like heavy metal, cartoons and tv-shows. I am into real technical brutal death metal.
6. My favorite place on the world is somewhere in Australia or New Zealand. Although I have never been there.
7. I never thought when I was kid that we were going to have things like the internet, mp3s, etc. But then I thought at this time we would be landing on mars.
[...] uss parche Well, I'm back after a month, and I thought I'd start out easy. I'd been tagged by Dan to try to figure out 7 interesting things about myself. I've never been a fan of chain letters, [...]