Ciao, cuoiaio

I’ve had a pretty good couple of months. Shortly after my last blog I went to Venice for a couple of days with my family. My sister was having a big birthday, and knew she was going on holiday with her husband and son, but didn’t know (a) where they were going or (b) that we were all coming to.

The surprise was slightly spoiled by my dad shouting at my other sister to get out of eyesight when the birthday girl arrived in the airport. Apparently his voice carries. But it was a really lovely holiday, in a flipping beautiful setting.

I was really impressed by Venice; it was unlike any other city I’ve been to. You don’t drive to work, you hop in your boat, and then moor it outside your house at the end of the working day. I had so much fun just casually exploring the city and working my way between various glorious food vendors.

Needless to say I would have loved to stay there for longer. Thankfully, I’m off to Italy again at the start of June! There are twelve of us going, staying in an AirBnB villa for week. To say I’m excited to get back to the land of pasta would be an understatement.

Venice did give me a a bit of language jealousy. Similar to when I was in Japan, I found myself frustrated at not being able to properly navigate the place on account of not having a clue what anyone was saying. In Japan, I had some Chinese ability to allow me to read a couple of characters, and in Italy I had my French (and fifteen-year-old vague memories of Latin). But it’s no substitute for actually speaking the language, and being able to order something in a restaurant/shop/ice cream stand (you can really tell food is my driving factor in life can’t you).

So, on returning to Norn Iron, I managed to find myself some Italian lessons! It’s only a six week course and it’s very much for beginners, and in fact I’m only able to make it to 4 out of 6 lessons. But I’m excited to give a new language a whack and see if I can work on becoming the man in the Dolmio adverts.

Other recent enjoyments have been the Belfast Film Festival (including a virtual reality studio and an absolutely phenomenal Chinese film called Still Tomorrow), the long-awaited death of winter, binges of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the Festival of Fools, and particular mention goes to having Flaming Lip and Classic Girl over visiting me a few weeks ago. They’re both from London and the downside of having lots of friends living there is that your amount-of-time-per-friend really starts to suffer. So I really had the best time actually getting to hang out with them, and properly chat. I put on my Belfast tour guide cap and took them around a couple of museums, a lot of food locations, and a balance of both super-Catholic and super-Protestant murals.

It was all a plan to slowly try and convince all my uni friends that Belfast is the place to be and they should just all move here. I don’t really fancy my chances but you can’t blame a guy for trying.

M

Is this thing still on?

Now that it’s 2018, I’ve found myself and my friends realising that “it was ten years ago that we..”

I’m nearly a decade out of school, and it’s almost been ten years since I started university. A few of my friends have been saying that they can’t believe this, that time’s flying by etc. But for me it really does feel like ten years ago. When I look back to the person I was in school that genuinely feels like a lot of time between then and now.

People had always warned me about time going quickly, and I remember hearing that time speeds up as you get older: when you’re 4, a year is a quarter of your entire life. At twenty, proportionally a year is a fifth of that size. So years ago I started trying to keep an eye on time passing, to ensure I wasn’t letting life pass me by. One of the tools I used for this was blogging. Back in the days of LiveJournal, my friend Poor Little Rich Boy referred to using a blog as an “Anchor in Time”. And I think it helped: I charted some major events in my life, I was able to spend a moment and in writing things down, take stock. A month felt like a month, and a year a year. Now, a decade feels like a decade.

Scrolling down on this page, there are significant gaps in between blog entries in recent times. Partly as a result of not blogging, to me it feels as if life is speeding up a bit. So I’m hoping to try and blog a bit more regularly. To help keep stock, and because it was always something I enjoyed doing, and something I liked being able to look back on (although looking back at blogs from being 18 admittedly is a little bit painful).

Other objectives include dealing with my friends being in multiple places. Thankfully I don’t have too many friends in other countries, but it’s even difficult trying to semi-regularly see friends who are based within the UK. I was over in London last weekend and while I got to see a fair number of people, I didn’t get to spend as much time with individual people as I would have liked. There were a couple of ones I properly did get to hang out with, and I really really enjoyed that. I miss being able to lounge about in the same living room as some of those lovely people, and so any opportunity I can get to emulate it is much appreciated.

On a similar vein I had a uni friend over visiting for a weekend a fortnight ago. She’d been over before, so the emphasis wasn’t really on touristy things, and was more on enjoying what Belfast has to offer. And filling our stomachs until they perforated. This included a belated Chinese New Year party and around 300 dumplings (the remnants of which are gloriously still in my freezer.. I can’t wait). She was one of the first really good friends I made at uni so I relished the opportunity to catch up in what was embarrassingly the first time in about 18 months..

Speaking of positives, I continue to be obsessed with my nephew. The wee man is just over a year old now, and is bossing the entire family around. His excitable, cheery self is a real joy to be around, and with the blizzards in Ireland and a few other things he’s actually spent a good amount of time in Belfast recently, allowing me to hang out with him more than normal. The quest to becoming his favourite is in progress.

The other new baby in my life is something I’d been working towards for a while: a new car! By new I of course mean used, but it’s a 2015 Corsa with only 12,000 miles on the clock so I figured it wasn’t far off from being new. My original plan was to go find a nice boring sturdy car, but this souped-up Corsa with its whistles and bells changed my mind pretty instantaneously. Yes I’m aware it’s a Vauxhall and not a Ferrari, but it’s a significant improvement on my 15 year old Fiesta and I’m kind of in love. There is a bluetooth and a touchscreen and because it’s me there are colour-coded floor mats. With its JAO registration plate I’ve affectionately called him Chairman Jao.

Onwards and upwards through the gear box.

M

This little light of mine

… It has been a while since I last blogged. I’ve had a nice few months! Work has been great, plenty of fun times with my friends, and lots of good wholesome family moments- really enjoying spending time with the nephew. 

I’m unlikely to say much more than that cause let’s face it I’m a lazy sod. So instead let’s talk about my wee winter trip! I’m just back from a couple of days in the French city of Lyon, which is a really beautiful city. Aside from the fact that it’s the gastronomic capital of France (obviously nothing I’d be remotely interested in), part of the reason I went to Lyon specifically was to see a French friend of mine I’d made earlier in the year. 

I was sitting in the park one day on the grass when a guy comes down and sits next to me. I did the standard British thing of thinking “what does he want is he selling something check if he’s crazy do you think he’s in a cult”, as well as the standard Irish thing of talking away to him. It turns out he’s just really friendly and perhaps was missing his family/girlfriend. Anyway over the few months he was in NI on placement I got to know him and he met my friends a few times. So PJB and I decided we’d pay him a visit in Lyon!

I’ve been to France a couple of times: Paris maybe three or four times, Val Thorens and Tignes for skiing, and Nice earlier in the year. Each time I had a bit of interaction with the French people but it was usually in the form of me being a customer. But my friend invited us round for a family meal and I was able to see what PJB (who’d spent a year in France on her year abroad) meant when she was talking about French hospitality. My previous experience with French people has been somewhat variable when it comes to how nice they’ve been, but it turns out that’s cause most of the ones I’ve met have been Parisians.. The family were so ridiculously welcoming. His niece was being baptised the next day, so we were greeted by his immediate family, his cousins, aunt and uncle, and his kickass granny. I had a wee moment reflecting on how a chance opportunity had led me to having such a rewarding experience. They were all so nice, so attentive, and they ploughed us with so much food. And wine. Oh man the wine. 

That actually brings us nicely to the next topic: the fooooooood. Sweet Lord almighty, did we eat well over the four days. As with anywhere in France, you don’t have to walk far to find a glorious bakery, or a patisserie with a window display that’d make you mug your granny just so you can buy something. We subscribed to the standard Michael philosophy of “why have three meals a day when you can just eat constantly”, and there was no lack of options. We dropped into a bakery at almost every available opportunity, and hunger became a distant memory. Lyonnaise food tends to be a little rich: cured meats, pâtés, obviously lots of cheese. There’s also a classic dessert which is a tart made from candied pralines, and as a result of the sugar the tart is a beautiful red/pink colour. Hoping to make it myself some day! Restaurants commonly call themselves “bouchons”, which are small traditional taverns serving local fare on checkered tablecloths accompanied by lovely bread and the warm greeting of the host. We tried two out and it was definitely worth it. Now that I’m home, the plan is to try and train my body to not expect the constant infusion of butter that it’s been treated to for the past few days. 

The reason we visited Lyon when we did is for their annual Fête des Lumières (festival of lights). In commemoration of the installation of a statue of the Virgin Mary, the whole city is covered in lights, be they candles on windowsills or artistic light shows projected onto the beautiful Renaissance architecture of the city. And it’s class! The city is full of hundreds of thousands of people, so there’s a fair amount of crowding/security presence, but it was a great atmosphere and really beautiful. I’ll leave you with a wee snap or two.

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M

Pressing benches

This Friday is my last day in the lab. Six weeks isn’t a very long time to spend in one, but when planning it I realised there’s a limit to how long I could be unemployed for… The aim of my time here was predominantly exposure: after opting out of research opportunities at uni in favour of things like human evolution and French, I wanted to see what the lab environment entailed, and if it’s something I could envisage myself making up a significant portion of my future career.

As I was only to be here for a short time, there wasn’t much hope of me getting oriented and adequately skilled up in time to do an experiment with results worth publishing. And while I’d probably have been happy enough with that, my supervisor was keen for me to get something demonstrable out of my time here. So, I’ve been doing a paper-based project, trying to write a review paper (/meta-analysis) on some drugs currently in Phase 1 & 2 clinical trials.

Alongside this, I’ve been popping in and out of the laboratory itself, where two new PhD students are being shown the ropes on a couple of experiments. So I’ve been learning said ropes alongside them as well as poking around with a couple of cells: feeding them, changing them, and generally treating them like microscopic babies. Or sea-monkeys!

It’s been fun here, and I’ve had a good bit of craic with the people in the lab. I think I’ve gained a nice amount of exposure to see what life is like in research, and at the different levels of involvement/seniority. It’s also quite fun hearing people having intelligent scientific conversations, as opposed to the intelligent clinical ones I’m more used to from the past few years in the hospital.

While obviously I’ve not experienced the stress induced by The Dreaded Write-Up (which my PhD friends will attest to is real), I imagine it’s something I could ultimately cope with, and so I reckon lab work is something I’d happily get involved in later down the line.

Besides, I wouldn’t want to miss out on an opportunity to have some more sea monkeys.

M

We will steal your heart

So for the past few weeks I’ve slowly been letting my life crumble into ruin, and having a glorious time while doing so. Why?

Because I’ve got a new video game.

I was really excited about it coming out, and pre-ordered it off Amazon. Imagine my horror when I get an email to say the delivery has been delayed by a month because they didn’t have enough of the games in stock.

So I did what any sane person would do in my situation: I drove for an hour, crossed the border to the Republic and bought it in Dundalk.

I regret nothing.

The game is so slick. I instantly fell in love with the entire look of it, from the opening credits to the bloody start menu- the game is dripping with style. Never mind the fact that it’s set in Japan and is essentially about levelling up a group of teenagers with superpowers. Add in the unbelievably cool acid jazz soundtrack and one month later you’ve got a very happy Michael, 70 hours in.

So I’m trying very hard to still go outside, to still go to work and still speak to other humans. But I mean come on.

M

Mind, body and soul train

Always up for a knees-up, at the weekend I was down in Monaghan for a friend’s wedding. I worked with her in Craigavon when I was starting out as a baby doctor (whereas now I’m a firmly-mature toddler doctor). The girl who was getting married is just the loveliest person, and I was down with a really nice group of people. I was pretty lucky if I’m honest to end up with the cohort of F1s that I did, and was pretty touched to be invited along.

I bloody love weddings; seeing the bride and groom at the front of the chapel/temple/secular gathering area grinning at each other and nervously chatting always brings a smile to my face. Hers was no exception, and her family were all a bit adorable. “Good bears” as she’d describe them.

The other reasons I love weddings are that they’re a giant steed good feed and an excellent opportunity to jig your foot on the dance floor. I got massively into the boogieing as I so often do, and earned the title of “most nimble guest” at the wedding. Obviously I would have preferred most handsome, but you take what you can.
In other news I’ve been working in a Belfast hospital since the start of February, under the General Medicine umbrella. It’s been quite a nice job; the staff, culture and atmosphere are all really friendly and it’s definitely been educationally useful. But I actually just finished there last week, and for the next 6-8 weeks I’ve rejoined the ranks of the unemployed.
The reason for this is that I’ve arranged a placement in a cancer research lab, where I’ll hopefully be getting some exposure and insight into clinical research, with the hope of informing future decisions on how much of a role I would like research to take in my career.

Like with starting any new job, I’m a bit nervous about starting in general, and about not knowing anything at first- as it’s a completely different skill-set from what I’ve been developing these past six years. But with a bit of time/graft/blind luck (delete as appropriate) I’ll hopefully get the hang of it.
Now, it’s time for me to confess something. To get a bit of a weight off my chest. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I feel it’s important to own up to these things.

I… I have a personal trainer.

That’s right, I’m one of Those People. Those middle-class eejits. Next week I’m sure I’ll be talking about the decline in quality of quinoa and complaining that my latte cup isn’t locally-sourced.

It started a month or two ago- I was in the gym flailing around aimlessly as I often do, when a staff member came up to me and asked if I’d be interested in a free personal training session. The first key thing he said was “free”. The second key thing was when he told me his name was Ivan. I couldn’t pass that up- I thought it’d be too funny to say no to a session with Ivan the Terrible.

I went fully expecting to hate it; and find the whole thing both awkward and useless, his guidance of “drink protein shakes and women will love you” to fall on some very deaf (and very gay) ears. But the crafty beggar sussed me out- he worked out that I’m fundamentally lazy, and explicitly said there was a limit to how much I’d be willing to be pushed. He told me that he wouldn’t go overboard cause he knew I wasn’t interested in becoming ridiculously-built. He didn’t mention attracting women once. He scoffed at the idea of protein shakes and said I should just eat real food. And to top it all off he had good chat.

He got me. Read me like a book and now I’m paying extra money to the gym. I’m Chandler from Friends and there’s no way out. Excuse me while I go look for a fair-trade yoga mat.

M

Examine that

On Wednesday and Thursday I had the pleasure of sitting some exams. I thought it was two three-hour papers, but I found out on Sunday that it was in fact three papers. So you can tell the extent of the preparation I did for them..

It’s a bit annoying sitting professional exams- necessary hoops to jump through in order to progress in any speciality. Unlike exams at university, there’s no-one else really going through the exams with you, and other people don’t really understand what the exams are, so there’s a distinct lack of sympathy for attention-seeking people such as myself. Again unlike at university, you don’t get any time off to revise/learn for them, so all your work is being done in the evening when you’ve just come home from a (usually tiring) day at work. There’s also no sense of relief when you finish or pass them, as you’ve gotta go back to work and again, there’s no-one else doing them. The benefit of them not being university exams is that you can resit them if you fail. It just costs you several hundred quid each pop.

I shouldn’t complain too much though. It is useful learning things, and I’ve found myself using some of the new information in work. And any difficulty with passing them is probably down to my laziness more than anything else. They were difficult, but they were always gonna be difficult, so we’ll see in a couple of weeks time how they went.

Work’s been going well recently. Initially when I came back I was piecing together one-off shifts to get some money in, but since the start of February I’ve been working on a full rota in a hospital in Belfast. It’s been nice having a steady routine and income, and as well the hospital is small and really friendly which helps with job satisfaction. Got on a work night out the other week after some night shifts and had the standard slightly-awkward conversations in work several days later when people comment on my unexpected dancing enthusiasm.

I’ll be there until the end of this month, when I’m doing a couple of weeks in a lab doing voluntary work (essentially a studentship) to try and see what I think of research and whether/how much I’d want it to be a part of my future career. So at the minute I’m in saving mode to try and prepare for being unemployed again!

A pretty major positive over the past few weeks is that my sister has been able to come up to Belfast a good number of times with my new nephew in tow! The wee dude is doing really well, and is a very well-behaved child, rarely venturing anywhere near crying. I was really honoured a couple of weeks ago when I was asked to be his godfather! I said yes, as I figured any opportunity to further my mission to become his favourite should definitely be taken.

M

A gig around town

Trying to be alternative, I was at a few gigs last week. The first was a night called Output, an annual conference for people in the music production industry in Northern Ireland. I obviously didn’t go to this bit, but in the evening across about six different venues in Belfast there were a series of gigs from Irish artists. Mostly based in the cathedral quarter, the place was absolutely buzzing and people were having a great time running between the gigs- or even just setting up shop in one with a beer and seeing what was in store.

Some of the highlights:

A wee band from Armagh, these guys captivated the back bar in the Duke of York, silencing the room with their melodies (at least until my drunk friend fell off his chair).

Next up is a band from down south called Le Boom, who were having an absolute rave of a time in the Dirty Onion

 

As well as the Output festival, last weekend I went down to Dublin to see Tegan & Sara. They’re a Canadian band, are twins who are both gay, and their target audience is teenage girls from 2006. So I was kind of excited to see what the crowd would be like now that those gay teenagers are now pushing thirty.

Their past two albums have marked a change from acoustic to a more pop sound, and they changed some of their older tracks to reflect this on the night. Tegan was ill, and pumped up on antibiotics and steroids, battling through like a trooper. There was a lot of jumping, and the place was absolutely packed- the atmosphere was great, and Tegan’s determination to keep going helped to feed that.

Anyway, as per their song for the Lego movie, everything was awesome.

M

Things that need to happen

A child is born

Yesterday evening after work I flew down the motorway to Dublin where I had the distinct pleasure of meeting my new nephew! He was born on Thursday and it’s a little bit    pretty   massively exciting.

I know we’ve had nine months to prepare for this moment, but I was pretty amazed at what my sister has achieved. It sounds like things happened pretty quickly at the end, and she did really well throughout it. In true form, at one point she apparently turned to the midwife and said “I’m sorry, I’m normally really in control”.

She’s always been my sister, and then she became a couple, and now the three of them are a family.

The end result is this tiny little human, who just seems amazing. It’s impressive how quickly you can feel a strong connection to a baby- the instincts kick in and you find yourself fascinated just by looking at them. Holding him in my arms, my mind was boggled imagining his entire life stretching out ahead of him. I’ll hopefully get to be a part of this new person’s life, get to know his personality and see some of his life experiences. He’s going to have hopes, goals, favourite foods and pet peeves, and right now he’s a wee sleepy newborn who gives the middle finger when you try to take photos.

I’ve had a decent amount of success into fooling my young cousins into thinking that I’m actually cool, and I look forward to attempting the same feat of trickery with this kid.

M