During the last few months of my postdoc, I found myself writing three papers simultaneously. One of the papers contained results contributed by two students I’d supervised, so I decided that this would be the perfect time to let the graduate student dip his toe into the shark-infested waters of academic writing. I provided him with an outline of the whole paper, and we discussed which of his results to include and how they might fit into the discussion. He came back to me a couple of weeks later with drafts of partial results and discussion sections.

[cont]

My husband and I bought our first house just over three years ago. We were complete newbies at this “proper grown-up” thing, and set up the mortgage in a way that makes our biweekly payments 100% predictable. We knew at the time that this might not be the optimal way of doing things, but agreed to go this route until we got used to the concept of fiscal responsibility and adjusted our budget to match the size of the payments.

So, fixed rate it is, despite the bank trying to persuade us to go variable. We no doubt missed out on some savings there. And we also decided to break our property tax payments into installments that get added to the biweekly mortgage payment, to avoid the scramble to find a big lump sum to pay to the city every six months (we were planning our wedding at the time and knew we’d be completely broke until that was over).

We had been planning to renegotiate all these factors when our initial five year fixed term ends in 2011, but the letter we got yesterday might accelerate that schedule. Here’s the first snippet:

We remitted a total of $x on your behalf for your property taxes due this current year. On Jun. 19, 2009, the balance in your Mortgage Property Tax Account was a surplus of $y.

This has happened before. I called to ask whether the surplus would be taken off our next mortgage payment, off the principal, or be transferred to our current account. They told me it would stay in our Property Tax Account, but they would not be reducing our future property tax payments. I told them this was not acceptable, and made them transfer the surplus into our current account (we used it to pay the wedding caterers). This necessitated a visit to my local branch, and the signing of a couple of forms. It took more paperwork to get them to reduce our property tax payments to avoid having a surplus the following year.

Back to yesterday’s letter:

Currently, we collect $z bi-weekly toward your Mortgage Property Tax Account. Effective Aug. 28, 2009, that amount will be $z + 9. As part of our annual review of the tax portion of your regular payment, we assume that next year's taxes will be the same as this year's taxes.

Erm, what? We have a surplus at the current level of payment (a surplus that I’m going to have to work to get back into an account that we can access), the total sum needed will stay the same, so you’re going to increase our payments??!! (And no, this isn’t to offset lower interest rates – I looked back at our original paperwork and that’s not how they calculate it).

Are you just sitting there in your offices, collecting interest on our money and laughing at us????!!!!

We’d already planned to see a financial adviser some time this year to discuss mortgages, savings, pensions, and investments, but I think that after reading this letter we’ll be making some calls this very weekend.

This amused me:

see more Engrish

The puzzle of the lost translation was solved by the first commenter on the original post, who explained that “inconvenience = gêne in French, not gène.”

As in “Your knowledge of English is just fine, it’s your accent that’s the problem”.

So you’re having a bad day at work.

People are constantly demanding your attention, adding to your behemoth of a to-do list that you can’t get to because of all the interruptions.

People are replying to your emails in such a way that you’re convinced they can’t possibly have read a single word of the original message.

You made a cup of tea and then remembered that you finished the milk yesterday, so you have to run over the road to the cafeteria, where you get stuck in a queue behind people trying to pay in pennies, and bring your milk back to your desk to find your tea has gone cold.

But then you open Google Reader (dramatic sigh optional), and notice a new post from one of your happy blogs. You know, the one that usually posts stories and photos that make you a little misty if you’re a sentimental sap like me, and (occasionally) something heartbreakingly sad that inspires you to open your wallet, pull out your credit card, and click on their link.

And your day gets a little brighter.

Bonobo Handshake is one of my happy blogs.

I started reading over a year ago, when the blog focused on the research being done at the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in Congo. The focus of the blog has shifted since then though, as the sanctuary staff prepare for the first ever release of these endangered apes into the wild. I’ve read about their efforts to secure a suitable site, and to engage the local community. I’ve read about their fears for their beloved bonobos, but their pragmatism that they have to start now and accept that some animals will die, rather than postpone the first attempt at release until the species is even more endangered than it is now.

And I’ve read with great joy that the first stages of the release have gone very well.

Go. Read. It might just brighten your day.

I was interested by an article in this week’s Nature¹ about the Italian government outsourcing some peer review to the American NIH.

This seems like it could be a useful exercise for some governments, in some circumstances. However, I was surprised to read that Italian researchers will not be brought into the peer review committees. It seems to me that there would be more potential for two-way learning if Italian science were represented during the entire process. I read a lot of blog posts about the NIH (and NSF) systems, and there are clear cultural differences even to Canadian peer review, so one might expect that there would be an even greater gulf between US and Italian practices. Every country will have different research priorities and academic structures, after all, and proposal rankings decided by foreign scientists might not translate into the optimal research portfolio for a smaller state.

It will be interesting to see how this experiment pans out, but I expect that wholesale outsourcing of peer review to a foreign government will always be an exception rather than a rule. Mixed nationality peer review committees, on the other hand, sound like a very interesting idea. I’m sure this already happens within the EU, and with specific collaborative agreements between different countries; does anyone have any experience in this area?

¹ accessed through the website, as all attempts to click RSS feed items from within Google Reader are resulting in “DOI not found” errors from The DOI System, rather than taking me to the relevant article on the Nature site in the usual way.

Very funny

(from here)

On a lighter note, do you like these beaver cup cakes my friend made for me?

I’ve been making good use of my ability to turn any song in my iTunes libarary into a free iPhone ringtone, and now have several custom tones set up to denote different callers.

Sitting at my desk just now, finishing up the day’s work and playing around on various websites, I suddenly got a call from my parents. At 1.30 am UK time.

Not having learned my lesson from last time, I freaked out and started trying to answer the call. Except I couldn’t quite figure out how… the usual button hadn’t popped up…

Oh. Right.

The iPod was on shuffle.

It was playing the song I took my parents’ ring tone from.

D’oh!

I recently commented that I don’t think there’s any such thing as the perfect job.

But I think I might have been wrong.

A paper in today’s Current Biology¹ made me realise that my perfect job does exist:

I understand the need for the first “Other” option.

But not the second.

No wonder they need people to specify.

As many of you already know, I became a Canadian citizen yesterday.

The ceremony was great. The participants came from 22 different countries, with every (inhabited) continent represented. There was talk of rights, freedoms, responsibilities, tolerance, and the Canadian family.

But the best part?

The oath was administered by a scientist!

One I’d heard of!

Me with Robert Hancock

Dr. Hancock talked about his own experience of becoming Canadian after time spent living in England, Singapore, Australia, Germany, and the US. And he also delivered a very strong message about protecting the environment of this beautiful country.

Beautiful indeed… and hot enough for a swim in the Pacific yesterday, despite the snow on the mountains

The icing on the cake of a wonderful day.

And after the cake, the champagne…

…in plastic cups, because you’re not allowed to drink alcohol on the beach.

We didn’t get caught, but for the first time, I wasn’t worried.

They can’t deport me any more.