Thursday, March 08, 2007

The Oasis that is Andre

This is what it's like to be with Andre:

Me (calling from mobile at 6:30pm): Hi Andre
Andre: Hey chère

Me: I'm just calling to say I'll be home in about an hour. Sorry I had to hang up on you today so quickly – it's been a bad day.
Andre: Oh, it's ok

Me: Andre, it's really been a bad day. I'm just looking forward to a quiet night in. Is that ok?
Andre: Sure. I'm making seafood fetuccini. What time do you want to eat?…

*flash to 30 minutes later. I'm walking up the driveway. I can smell something delicious. I round the stairs and see that Andre has been gardening. The chiminea has been watersealed. I walk into the house carrying 2 bottles of wine that I intend to drink myself unless physically restrained from doing so. There is a simple arrangement of pine cones and small flowers in a juice glass on the table, dinner is cooking, Andre is checking his recipe on the Internet

Andre: Hi baby. Happy International Woman's Day.
Me: *smiles*. Right, I can't believe forgot. Thank you.

Andre: So, do you feel like an 'International Woman'?
Me: Uh, well at the moment I definitely don't feel like a particularly happy one.

Andre: Well, that's probably appropriate today. Internationally, Women could be a lot happier.

Me: *mentally juxtaposing what he's just said against the comment my boss made to me less than 2 hours earlier about how my asking the date of the bonus payment was 'female curiosity'

Andre: Do you want a hug?
Me: Uh, yes. That's exactly what I want.

Happy International Woman's Day everyone. I hope some day there is an abundance of loving and emotionally intelligent partners to go around for everyone.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Storming the Castle... erm.. Airport

So this morning I'm picking Andre up at the Airport.
It was a typical moment in the life of me, and it went something like this:

6:10

  • Alarm goes off
  • Decide that that is waaayy to early as I don't have to be at the airport until 8am. What was I thinking???
  • Remember that I decided last night that was going to wash my hair so that it looks pretty.
  • Decide my hair looks pretty enough and reset alarm to 7:am
7am

  • Reluctantly get out of bed and enter dark bathroom
  • Light candle (yes, friends, we're back to candle-lit showers because I'm too lazy to figure out how to re-install my ghetto lightbulb that Andre knocked off the wires the LAST time he was here)
  • Shower by candlelight

Plod downstairs and turn on computer. Read Reddit for 10 minutes.

7:30am

  • Realize I have to BE at the airport in 30 minutes to pick up Andre and I'm not dressed
  • Run upstairs making a mental note of the location of my mobile phone
  • Peer into closet and mentally dismiss the outfit I had selected last night as hair is not washed and slightly non-pretty hair does not match completely pretty outfit.
  • Glance at watch and grab jeans
  • Locate black camisole
  • Run back into bathroom and slap on some slap, by candlelight, and hope I'm not making myself look like the missing member of Twisted Sister
  • Return to location of last sighting of black camisole and become baffled because it is no longer there.
  • Search frantically for black camisole: under the bed, in dresser drawers, under the covers, in the bathroom, under the bed again (not sure why). Become convinced that someone is fucking with my head because the black camisole was RIGHT THERE 2 MINUTES AGO.
  • Yank open closet door to locate alternate outfit that doesn't require a black camisole.
  • Fix eyes on black camisole hanging oh-so-innocently with my bras as if it hadn't just crawled across the room and jumped onto a hanger in the closet.
  • Get dressed, run downstairs to grab flight details... which turn out to be still AT THE OFFICE despite the fact that the last thing I did before leaving was print them off to take them with me
  • Yell "GRRRWAAAAWWAAWHAHHH!!!" which is the sound someone makes when they face the incontrovertible realization that they are braindamaged.
  • Boot up work computer to locate work email with flight details... computer cheerfully refuses to connect to the wireless network
  • Frantically search through stack of paper and find envelope where booking reference is written so that I can log into the BA website with my other computer and confirm that Andre's flight is, in fact, landing at 7:45 which is, uh RIGHT NOW.
  • Grab purse and head toward door
  • recall that mobile phone is not in purse but is in clever location in the apartment. Somewhere.
  • Have no bloody screaming clue where mobile is, but suspect it has hung itself up with the bras.
  • Scramble through purse to locate my business card where my mobile number is printed, grab the land line and dial mobile number.
  • Listen to theme from "Hockey Night in Canada" and recall that oh-so-clever me left my mobile by the front door.
  • Grab mobile as I race out the door
  • Race to the airport and somehow arrive just after 8:10, park and run like mad into the arrivals area while smoothing down freakishly messy hair
  • Walk calmly the last 100meters to the arrivals gate. Oh yeah, I'm a little late, but I was probably just finishing my manicure. No biggy.
Andre is not yet in the arrivals area! So I wait.

8:25

  • Check the arrivals board and realize that Andre's flight LEAVES London at 7:45 and that his flight actually arrives in Brussels at 11:05.
  • Start to say "MOTHER FU*..." but stop before it comes out
  • Pay 2Euro50 for parking and drive home.

10:00

  • I am a dick.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

The Shower Pod

On a recent flight from Toronto to Brussels I had a stopover in London Heathrow where British Airways has an oh-so-lovely business class lounge. And really, there is nothing like shaking off the drudgery of a (champagne sodden) transatlantic flight (where your every ridiculous whim is attended to), by spending some time in a well-appointed business class lounge.

To my delight, I quickly discovered London Heathrow’s British Airways business class lounge has a day spa.

Excited, but trying not to look too much like I’d just tumbled off the pumpkin wagon, I approached the mahogany reception desk to arrange to have a shower. The pretty robe-clad attendant reached to the shelf behind her and took down a puffy, white towel that had, roughly, the surface area of Kuwait. She handed it to me with a smile and said in a lovely British accent “Room 6. Please enjoy the shower pod. Do you have any questions about operating it or can I otherwise assist you”?

Shower pod??? What’s a shower pod? Not wanting to discotinue my charade as a business lounge insider, I opted not to ask her about this. Instead, I thanked her, took the towel and restrained myself from skipping over to room 6.

This delightful little room did, in fact, have something that – if I had been personally responsible for naming it – I also would have named a ‘shower pod’. It was a shower. Encased in a glass pod. I opened the door tentatively, frowning a little at the various buttons and water jets next to what was a rather overlarge console. The console, which looked like it might have been modeled after a modern cockpit instrumentation, was a mindboggingly complex array of dials, buttons, levers and electronic touch pads. Luckily there was a long page of directions etched onto a plaque on the wall next to the pod. Unluckily, I’m not one to read directions. Rather, my mind did what it always does when presented with unfamiliar and interesting gadgets – which is to go “hey, what does this do”?! And then my hands spring into action while my mind then goes off counting blades of grass or something.

The choice between actually experiencing the shower pod or reading about it first for 10 minutes, was really no choice at all. I quickly stripped naked, wrapped a towel around my hair so it wouldn’t get wet, and jumped into the shower pod (and probably yelled ‘woo hoo’ while doing so), closing the door behind me. Once encapsulated in the pod, I stood in front of the console, paused for a brief second to consider a prudent approach, and then enthusiastically grabbed two of the dials and turned them hard in opposite directions.

Immediately the entire room flooded with freezing cold water. I hadn’t noticed the jets on the ceiling or the floor of the pod, and frigid water was now shooting at me from all directions. I screamed. I started running frantically around the pod trying to escape the freezing cold spray while trying to turn the dials off – unfortunately there were cold water jets set to ‘massage’ that were spraying me directly in the face, so I was no longer sure which dials I had initially turned. Also unfortunately, there is no-where to run inside a pod. Dial turning quickly took on a random quality with much whooping and sputtering -- much like a naked Native Rain Dance in reverse.

A few minutes of Arctic face massage and numerous button/lever/touchpad permutations later, I got the jets and temperature under control without actually drowning myself. Relieved, I put the sopping wet towel that had formerly been on my hair onto the pod’s built in seat and sat down breathlessly.

I started laughing, realizing that it seems like I’m always doing something idiotic like that and can’t seem to help it. Chuckling, I soaped up and started to wash my hair. That’s pretty much the same time I started to smell the eucalyptus. Which apparently signals that the water will shut off and that steam will start pouring out of the jets.

Some moments later, after I figured out how to deactivate the steam timer I’d triggered, I rinsed off the soap that I was starting to fear I’d be wearing to Brussels, and got out of the shower pod. Forever.

Monday, February 05, 2007

Cyber Stalker

After work today I was a bit bored, so I googled my ex-boyfriend. I know... not cool to do; really not cool to admit.

Many of the return results were eBay listings, so I clicked on one. Apparently in December Sandy bought a French copy of "Brainy Baby"... which is, I guess, a dvd to ensure that your baby grows up to be an existentialist philosopher.

Sooooo... now I'm the kind of bummed out you can only get when you are nearly 40, single, childless, and you find out that your ex-boyfriend (who, to your surprise, married your good friend right after university) is going to have a baby. Or just had a baby. Or whatever.

I don't care.

Rather, I do care but in that way where I wish I didn't.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Ennui

Tonight I'm beyond bored.

I worked all day *yawn* and then had a French lesson*Je baîlle*.

It's specified in my employment contract that I'm entitled to 60 hours of private language instruction. Tonight I had hours 54 and 55. So, I guess I'm almost completely French.

Early on in my intention to study French, I, being a serious student desiring of a well-rounded education, decided to date a French man. It was wonderful for a while, but I noticed quickly that our French lessons kept deteriorating into makeout sessions. Over time, my general proficiency with French hadn't increased as I'd hoped. I do, however, now possess a fairly extensive vocabulary of vulgar French words for the baby-making bits and nearly shameful control over the trilled R.

I'm not sure how useful this will be in a business setting.

In the end, I admit that having a French lover wasn't all I thought it would be. Sure they are fun to play with, and very nice to look at, but it's my (limited) experience that they are also completely psychotic.

Or maybe, in fairness to the eleventy-hexillion other French men, it was just this particular one.

Our last moments together took place one candle-lit evening between 10:10 and 10:20pm. I remember sitting on the couch cozily with him, when he asked me if I had drunk the last of the cognac. I said I had. He said "but yesterday you said you were going to wait and drink it with me". I replied "oh, did I? I don't remember. I'm sorry. I drank it". At which point he called me a liar, got up and started packing his things to leave. When I tried to talk to him, he said in his super sexy French accent "if you are going to lie to me about small things, there is nothing that you won't lie to me about". I started to protest, and wanted to tell him that, although I drank that particular cognac, I had earlier in the day bought another bottle,. But he put his finger on my lips and said, smoulderingly, "don't speak to me, I don't want to hear your lies".

It was the only time I've ever simultaneously experienced raw fury and raw desire to rip someones' clothes off.

Without another word from either of us, he left my apartment and my life forever.

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Haagen-Dazs

... has a new (to me) flavour: Macadamia Nut Brittle.
It sounds amazing, but it's not.

But I ate it anyway.

Damn you Haagen-Dazs!!! *shakes fist at freezer*

On a nearly random tangent... I just finished watching "Together". It's a lovely and funny Swedish movie from 1975 about a middle-class housewife who leaves her husband and takes her kids to live in her brother's commune. I can't remember when I've liked a film so much, and I highly recommend it. (I say 'nearly' random because I was eating Haagen-Dazs all through the movie. DAMN you Haagen-Dazs!!! Why do you have to be so delicious, even when you are mediocre!! *shakes fist at half empty carton*)

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Tuesday, January 30, 2007

A Medical Miracle

So, today I experienced a miracle. No, really. It was, by Canadian standards, unequivocally, a miraculous experience...

Last night, I woke up in the middle of the night, and immediately realized that something was not quite right. A trip to the loo (my darling) confirmed that I was in the early stages of a UTI (i.e., urinary tract infection, for those of you lucky enough to not know about such acronyms). Not to panic, I quickly located my well-expired, just-in-case prescription for dealing with such a malady. My prescription is so expired, in fact, that it is no longer possible to read the label as it has worn off the bottle. I only know its contents because of the ridiculous lie I had to tell a Doctor in Ontario about 2 years ago in order to get it, and because I carry it with me. Everywhere.

You're wondering why? Good question.

I have had 3 UTIs in my life. This is the 4th. I acquired this prescription after my 3rd UTI with the self-preservatory intention of avoiding what I had just gone through in treating my 3rd UTI.

Which is how I found myself, about two years ago on a Saturday afternoon, talking my way into a medical clinic that was trying to close its doors for the weekend (note: this is the ONLY time it would be possible to pull a clinic scam, because the employees just want to get out of their disease-ridden workplace).

Once inside, I lied to the clinician about my symptoms. I begged them to allow me to see a doctor. They told me they were closing and the doctor was leaving. I assured them that I would NEVER impose on the medical system in this way, but that it was an emergency. I lied.

They asked me for a urine sample, which I provided and asked me to wait for the Doctor. The Doctor who saw me wearing her coat and holding her purse, told me that my sample hadn't revealed any trace of an infection. I told her that I had just drank a MASSIVE amount of water and suggested that it might have diluted my sample to undetectable levels (I read on the internet that this was possible). I then proceeded to describe, in detail, the symptoms of my last UTI and made it generally clear that noone was about to start their weekend any time soon. And then the clincher -- I looked her straight in the eye and told her I was 4 hours from getting onto a flight to Europe and that she was my only hope.

Reluctantly she wrote me a prescription which I got filled and which, until today, I carried with me whenever I was away from my house for more than a day.

So, ok, why was all this deception necessary? Am I a hypochondriac? I don't think I am.

Anyone who has had a UTI knows how intensely painful they get, and how quickly the pain sets in. One moment you're like "hmmm... something's not quite right here" and the next it's like you're auditioning for a catholic heavy metal band, hollering "Holy Sweet Mother of GOD"!! in your WC. And then it just keeps getting worse, and worse. Until you take medicine for it, which, in Canada, has personally taken me up to 8 hours to obtain via the 'normal' channels.

In Canada, this is my personal experience of the normal way to obtain after-hours treatment for an excruciatingly painful UT infection:

You wake up at 3:00am in terrible pain. You run to the washroom where you will spend the next hour or so. You grab the phonebook and dial the number for the Dial-a-Nurse-in-NorthBay.

Dial-a-Nurse is the government's way of trying to keep people out of the emergency rooms.

How it works is, you describe your symptoms to a nurse located "somewhere in Ontario" who tells you that, if you feel worse in an hour, to go to the emergency room -- and then she gives you a case number.

You wait in your bathroom for about 20 minutes. Things get worse.

You drive to Emergency, find a parking space 1/4km away from the entrance, and run into the building. Running past the intake nurse and the mashed up roomful of broken legs, bloody faces, drunks, and concerned-looking elderly spouses in their pj's, you beeline for the filthy bathroom, sending up a prayer that it is unoccupied because you are quite prepared to pull the fracking handle off the fracking door and bodyslam any occupant off of the toilet. You are so grateful that it's empty that you fail to be judgmental about how unclean it is.

5 minutes later, you enter a line to wait your turn to see the intake nurse. You are behind a suspected heart attack and an insulin reaction. Behind you, in the wating room, children are whimpering or screaming, old people are moaning, and a drunk teenager is holding a bloody rag to his nose and scowling angrily at everyone in the room. The only 2 available seats are on his immediate right and immediate left. Several people are standing, leaning miserably against the wall. You know it is going to be a long night.

It's finally your turn to see the intake nurse. You tell her that you really have to pee again. She looks at you, sort of, shrugs and says "well, you can go to the bathroom, but you are going to have to wait in line again". Seeing how this could end up in an endless loop, you resolve to ignore the painful pressure and the certainty that you are seconds away from peeing yourself in the intake chair. You remain seated and answer her questions, producing your health card, and correcting her spelling as she enters your particulars into the system. She hands you a hospital card and tells you to take a seat and wait to be called. You ask how long she thinks it might be. You tell her that you are in quite a lot of pain and just need to see the doctor for 5 minutes to get a prescription. She is already busy with other paperwork and doesn't look at you as she shrugs and says "It's Friday night. Could be a few hours".

You have no options. You wait in the waiting room with everyone else.

For the next 5 hours, you alternate between getting up to pee and sitting in a hard molded plastic chair amongst the diseased and disordered. Everyone is in pain, or comforting someone else who is. Everyone is completely miserable. You don't think your pain could get any worse, but it does. Each time you get up to pee (which is every 5 or 6 minutes), you are certain that your name has been called and you have been overlooked. But you have no options but to keep getting up to pee and then to pester the intake nurse every hour or so who assures you that your name hasn't been called and that it probably won't be for quite a while.

Over the hours, a slow parade of the people who arrived before you march one-by-one past your chair as their names are called at painfully long intervals. Soon the waiting room contains mostly new broken faces and you start to allow yourself to believe that it might soon be your turn.

Finally, your name is called. You are brought into an examining room consisting of a bed & a cabinet that is surrounded by a sheet. A nurse asks you the same questions you were asked during intake, makes a few hurried notes on your chart, and tells you to take a seat in the 2nd waiting room. The doctor, she says, will be right with you.

In a Canadian emergency room "right with you" means "within 3 hours". Which is how long I sat in the second waiting room.

The 'second waiting room' was a chilly, dimly lit corner of a hallway with 6 plastic cafeteria chairs. In Canada the hospitals are purposefully kept at very low temperatures in order to keep the bacteria that is covering everything from multiplying too rapidly and killing everyone. The waiting room also had a broken brown table that was strewn with the standard array of magazines from the previous decade. Want a life-saving tip? NEVER touch the magazines in hospital waiting rooms. Over time these ancient texts are thumbed through by people with every disease known to man. And NEVER let your kids touch or play with the toys if there are any. EVER.

This hallway waiting room was also used as an overflow area for patients. Canadian emergency wards are always overfull, and there is no place to put the excess patients. The truly unfortunate are simply wheeled into hallways and left there. As I waited these next three hours, a nurse wheeled in a guerney that held someone's Grandmother. This frail, elderly woman lay underneath a thin blanket that she barely made a bump in. She began whimpering and ocassionally called out for a nurse to help her. Many nurses rushed past her, but none seemed to hear her. None stopped. A couple of times she tried reaching for them, but she was too weak. Too invisible. The nurses were too busy. She started crying. She said to noone that she was cold. She called out hoarsly that she was in pain. I went to the desk and asked a nurse to bring her a blanket. She said she would when she had time. I offered to bring one over to her. She looked at me levelly and said 'I will bring one when I have time. Please take your seat'.

And finally I saw the Doctor.

He asked me the same questions about my symptoms which I answered and which now included 'a lot of blood in my urine' and 'the inability to stand up straight'. He touched my lower back and informed me that the infection had advanced into both of my kidneys. He wrote me a prescription, got up and left without saying anything else.

Our entire interaction lasted less than 3 minutes.

When I walked past the old woman on the guerney, she was sleeping in the hallway where she had been left. The nurse still hadn't found time to bring her a blanket. I was happy she wasn't crying anymore.

I paid the hospital parking attendant about $20, drove to a pharmacy and got my prescription filled, which was another $20 or $25.

And that is why the next weekend, I drove to a clinic and lied in order to get a spare prescription. And that's why I was fully prepared this morning to take expired medication.

So about the miracle...

By contrast to my experience in Canada, I have just experienced the normal way in Belgium to obtain after-hours treatment for a UT infection. It goes something like this:

You wake up in pain just before 3:00am and think 'something isn't right', and immediately panic at the memory of the last UTI that comes flooding back. Prepared to start eating handfuls of the well-expired medication that smart-girl-you are immensely grateful to have, you decide to first see if there might be another option.

You find a flyer with the name of a doctor who is open all night and you phone her, doubtfully. The Doctor answers the call herself and tells you to come over. It is 3:07am. You drive 4 minutes to what looks like her house and she buzzes you inside. There is noone else in the waiting room.

You start to suspect that the UTI had actually killed you some hours ago and you are now entering Heaven's foyer.

The Doctor greets you with a handshake, shows you into her examination room (which is very clean) and asks you to describe your symptoms. She confirms that you have a UTI, writes you a prescription and directs you to the all-night pharmacy which is all the way on the other side of the intersection. She charges you 21Euros which your work will reimburse you for. The pharmacy takes less than 2 minutes to fill your prescription and charges you 1.86Euros which your company will also reimburse you for.

You arrive back home and take your first tablet standing in your kitchen. As you swallow it, you glance at the clock and note that the time is exactly 3:36. Less than 45 minutes have passed since you woke up.

You take the expired prescription out of your purse and dump it in the trash.

Closing the lid, you send up an apology for every bad thing you have ever said or thought about Belgium.

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Monday, January 29, 2007

The Return of Andre

It's official. Andre is coming back to Europe in 2 weeks.
He's staying until June.

Yay!

I guess we both decided that being apart was not cool.
Andre says it's "emotionally stupid" to be on two different continents. He sees coming back here as *essential*. I love artists. They are so dramatic.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

The New Blogger

Is it just me, or do other people hate having to upgrade to a *NEW* and *IMPROVED* and *COMPLETELY FABULOUS* new Blogger?

For one thing, I didn't mind the old Blogger. In fact, I can't tell the difference between the old one and the new one except for some blah-blah about having to log in next time with my google account. So if you never see me here again, it's because I couldn't figure that bit out.

For another thing, I noticed that they changed their terms and conditions. Now, I'm not a "terms and conditions" readin' kinda gal... I clicked 'uh, sure', but really, I could have just agreed to assasinate the prince of Hooleybooleyland. I really don't know.

So yesterday Yoka and I went to the Royal Museum of Art and History to see an exhibit on South America. She's an archeologist and Asyriologist (sp?) and loves museums. I'm more of an Art Gallery person, so when I go to museums, I mostly go to look at pretty stuff and guess what it could be used for. But yesterday there was something particularly special there -- one of the heads from Easter Island. It is massive. And beautiful! It is so mind-bogglingly big that I can't imagine how they could have shipped it. And part of me was sad that it was there at all. Seems to me our museums are full of raid excavation articles.

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Saturday, January 27, 2007

The Story of Adana

For a long time, I've been intending to record the Story of Adana and haven't, you know, gotten around to it. As it seems that I'm not blogging about my life much lately, I think it might be time tell Adana's story. The thing is, it's a long, winding tale, that's going to take a long time to tell. The other thing is, it's all true. But it's a fantastic kind of true that makes it nearly unbelievable.

The Story of Adana is one that I've been connected to for over 10 years, and it has just taken a turn that reminds me that it needs to be written. So, I'll start it here, in bite-sized chunks, and we'll see where it goes.

As I am writing this, the Story of Adana is taking place in real time. The characters are probably sleeping at the moment, as most of them are in a time zone 6 hours behind the one I'm writing in. To start near the end-most point then, I'll step onto the yellow path thusly...

Her email read "It's been a while and there is something I'd like to speak to you about. Something I'd rather not tell you in an email. Can you call me"?

I hadn't spoken to Adana in nearly a year, although we had exchanged a few emails around our birthdays. Auspiciously, these said 'Happy Birthday', but they really said things like "we're still friends, you and I, even though we agree that we can't be friends right now". So, when I got this email from her, I knew something significant had happened, and I wondered what her news could be. All I knew for certain is that it would not be boring. Adana never disappointed. And so I dialed the 14 digits, marking that I still knew them by heart even though I hadn't called in over a year and that I still have to look up my sister's number. As the call rang through, I thought about meeting Adana 10 years ago in graduate school.

When we met, Adana and I were both doctoral students in the Psychology Department at York University in Ontario. As a new student, I was a "first year". Adana had been there a year and was a "2nd year". In York's grad departement, there is very little fraternizing between the years. First year students like myself are too busy trying to settle in and pretend they aren't secretly terrified of being publicly exposed as the stupidest person in the department. The "2nd years", like Adana, have already figured out that there is at least one person stupider than them so they can relax and throw themselves into their research (as a side note, the "3rd years" are either gunning to finish their research and get the fuck out of grad school, or smoking pot and coasting knowing that they won't... and the "4th years" are either madly preparing to defend their thesis, or smoking pot and lying to their parents about why the department 'needs' them to stay on another year. Or two. Or, infamously, in Steve Callaghan's case, 10). So for the 1st 4 months after I arrived, Adana's and my worlds never intersected. I was dating someone in my class and spending most of my time in my lab which was on the same floor as Adana's. As her lab was at the end of the hall, I became vaguely aware of her existence only because she had to walk past my door.

The guy I was dating, Alex, was in a lab 1 floor up and had a notoriously noxious labmate named William who was in Adana's 2nd year class. William had two purposes in life: 1) to finish his thesis in record time and secure an academic position with a top US school and 2) to cause as much social destruction amongst the graduate students as possible. His primary weapons in the latter regard were a genius IQ, a breathtakingly cruel sense of humor, super-human verbal prowess, and an uncanny ability to seek and simultaneously destroy a person's achilles heel, and the rug underneath their feet. When you were a William Myers target, you were done for. He was almost without exception, feared and loathed by every student in the department. How I developed a certain regard and admiration for him still baffles. I feel that it can only be explained by my curiosity of human nature. I'd not, before or since, encountered a specimin like William. I found him fascinating and I started, tentatively, to try to become his friend. This is, of course, the social equivalent of befriending a hive of wasps. For a moment you might think all is well, but you always end up getting stung badly. But that's a tale for another time.

Over time, William and I did become friends. I suspect this happened partly because he regarded the lab I was in as the most scientifically useless lab in the department and was, therefore, no threat to him. It was also in part due to the regard he had for Alex who, being a very gentle and kind person, was his complete antithesis. One day Alex and I were having lunch together and William grabbed a chair, pushed it between us and started talking about the department. More specifally, he began to systematically cut through his classmates, describing in detail their weaknesses and explaining with military precision how each was inferior to himself. When I asked about Adana who he had excluded from his analysis, he paused and all he said was "oh, she's ok". He caught the look that passed between Alex and I at this high compliment, and quickly said "of course she's a complete introverted, anorexic weirdo in a lab that hasn't published a relevant paper since 1956 and is wasting her time on a line of research that will have exactly no impact on fucking anybody anywhere, but yeah, she's ok".

The next day, Adana walked past my lab. I jumped up, stood in the hallway behind her and called out 'hey'. She stopped and turned around. I introduced myself and asked if she wanted to come into my lab for a tea. She did, and that's how I found out that her name wasn't always Adana, that she was a former ballerina, and that her family and mine are from the same backwater town in Ontario and that we were both planning to drive there for visits that weekend. And so it was decided that we would meet up on Saturday morning and drive together.

It didn't quite work out as I imagined.

(to be continued...)