This week has been soooo busy that I'm likely to be relatively short.
Everything going well but just a lot of stuff to do.

Jason

___

This week was very busy as a whole pile of things come to a head.
First of all, the equipment that I need to function here at BC has
now come online - yes, I have temperature control on the NMR
spectrometers so I spent a couple of days on them this week.  (For
those in my group, yes, I know, a couple of days is nothing, but give
me a break, I'm getting back into it.)  In addition, my synthesis is
going well (and I really want to be making a big batch of my starting
material).  However, the biggest point was the fact that I had my
first seminar this week.

Somehow I've managed to schedule five talks in a month (in four
different states and two different continents), the first of which
was this week.  It was up at the University of New Hampshire, which
is a small-ish university about an hours train ride north of Boston.
It's a moderately small state university and most of the student
population is drawn from the New England area.  I have one colleague
there that I know reasonably well (Gary Weisman) who had invited me
up and the rest of the department tends to be more mechanistic than
synthetic so it's a nice place to visit.  I went up the night before
and was taken out for dinner before visiting the next day.  When I
asked why it was so quite in Portsmouth (yes, I know, it's crazy,
they stole all the names - it is New England after all) it was
pointed out that it was the opening Monday night of football season
and the Patriots were playing ...

Now here comes the problem with my visit.  The weekend before I'd
decided to go for a ride with the BC cycling club.  Of course, of the
two days that I could have ridden I chose the 15 degree C and raining
rather than 23 C and fine.  (Oh, and I got another flat ... grr.)
Anyhow, the result of this was my having a _very_ croaky throat.
This was OK for most of the morning with talking to people but was
kind of interesting as I gave my talk.  (There were moments where I
couldn't tell whether it was the accent or the fact that I was barely
audible which was confusing people.)  In the end the talk went down
pretty well and people appreciated it, which is always good.

The only other interesting work thing this week came with me teaching
a class for Larry (the person I'm visiting) while he was away - I'm
taking the same class twice this week as well.  It's the honors (sic)
stream for chemistry majors so they're about half a year in front of
their classmates.  There a sophomore class (second year) so this is
their second term of organic chemistry as a subject.  It was quite
fun but the class was very different to what I'm used to.  First of
all, I have to be very careful how I say things - pronounciation
differences mean I might not get understood if I'm not careful.
Second, they're not particularly interactive; I'm sure some of this
comes from me being new and some from the fact that it's nine in the
morning but still, not too chatty.  Then there's the fact that
lectures are 9-10:15.  And by that, I don't mean the Australian of
start at ten past and stop five minutes before you're meant to - I
mean, they expect to start at nine and finish at 10:15.  We'll see
what happens in the classes this week.

So all of this leads me to the 'thoughts on America' section of this
weeks LfA.  As I was waiting for my class on Tuesday to fill up, I
did a rough count.  About 60% of the students were wearing clothing
which was clearly Boston College brand - mostly sweatshirts but also
caps, t-shirts, sweatpants.  This is probably about normal - in fact,
if anything, it was under the norm.  While the grad students are not
as parochial about things, I'd say the average is about 20% for them.
And it's not just BC - travelling on the tram into the city you note
the same thing as you go through the Boston University precinct and
at least half the people at UNH earlier in the week were wearing UNH
gear.  (I, in fact, was gifted with a UNH pint glass on my leaving
...)

Such 'college pride' is considered perfectly acceptable and, in fact,
encouraged.  While you really don't see many people wearing UNSW kit
about UNSW (and if you do, you can guarantee they're probably
American) it really is completely the opposite here.  I'm not really
sure what it is - sort of a bizarre sort of 'uniform' that makes
everyone feel part of the same team.  (I can't criticise, I did aim
to fit in at the football game.)  The interesting point is that it
goes beyond just universities.  For example, wearing Red Sox gear
just anywhere is perfectly fine.  Also, you can get away with wearing
university logo stuff when you're at a different uni (though I'm
informed you do have to be a bit careful on that one).

The being part of a team side of thing is exemplified by something I
think I may have mentioned before - the BC Chemistry department has a
logo and everyone gets given a T-shirt when they arrive.  It's all
about branding!  And it goes past just clothes.  For example,
everything associated with BC is appropriately branded from the
vehicles which look after the electricity through to the police cars.
It does take a little bit of getting used to.

For photos of BC college gear, see last week's football photos.  For
photos of my BC Chemistry shirt and then the BC branded stuff, see ...
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3491345&l=71a11ac26e&id=570906321
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3491346&l=d02fad9e50&id=570906321
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3491347&l=f4d7c24717&id=570906321
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3491348&l=a4f6191b3d&id=570906321
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3491349&l=9fdf09c898&id=570906321

To finish off, an amusing note from this evening.  I found out that
Becca's (who I've known for a couple of years, mind you) parents live
down the road from Steven Tyler.  Yes, of Aerosmith.  Apparently he
grew up in the area and so he's 'just a local'.  Seriously, it
reminds me of a bizarre version of Two and a Half Men.  The amusing
part is because I found all this out when Becca sent me a text
message indicating that she was a bit miffed that Steven Tyler had
met her (parents) new dog and that she hadn't yet.

Next week:  I'm not sure, you'll just have to wait and see.  My be a
rant about the postal service, but we'll see.
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