When you stay or when you go...

...Father Christmas will still find you to say ho-ho-ho. Given my current situation, I thought it the ideal time to speak about transcience again. So as I sit in Copenhagen airport, waiting 3 hours for my connecting flight to Aarhus to take me onto Ebeltoft, I can't help but wonder how does one get into and cope with random situations such as these. One of the constant things that seems to come up as a scientist as just how much you have to travel. Two postdocs in my department at Manchester are foreign nationals. Not nearby mind you, one is Romanian and the other a Kiwi. Three of the other postgrads are from Southern Asia (India and Thailand to be precise). This isn't just moving country however. Conferences, those dreaded, delicious hellbeasts of information that crop up once or twice a year, are frequently held in beautiful locales. In the arse end of nowhere. Which is great unless you're actually trying to get there. And given few attendees outside of the students care about the surroundings its largely irrelevant.

By way of example, I'm currently on my way to a graduate school in Ebeltoft, Denamrk. On RF for Accelerators. Otherwise known as "The Source of a Thousand PAINS!" As google maps so helpfully tells me its also located in the arse end of nowhere. With a car, not a problem with Europe's sickeningly efficient road system. As a lowly grad student that hasn't gotten around the getting one yet... not so much. Throw in a need to actually socialise with old friends and you end up vaguely with this.

In this past week I've travelled from the booney wilds of Saint Genis, France, to Geneva Airport, Switzerland. So far so good, only about 5 miles. Now fly to Manchester. Ok, about an extra 800miles. Not so bad. Now drive to Bournemouth with van to move out of flat. Ok, an extra 250 miles, still not too excessive. Now train to London, followed by a flight to Copenhagen, then to Aarhus, followed by a bus ride to Ebeltoft. Not bad for 5 days. I'd mention the following flight to Cyprus and back to Geneva but that might just be taking the piss. But I hope gets across the general mayhem of travelling in science. And it seems to get worse as you progress through your career.

My supervisor, crazy bastard he is has so far been to CERN, Kyoto and I think DESY already this year. He'll be doing something at Ebeltoft too for a couple of days and will be going to SLAC in California in September too. I think technically that qualifies him for some kind of Kyoto protocol all by himself but I digress.

It raises a couple of weird phenomena amongst particle physicists which are quite funny when you think about it. For instance, people from the US visiting CERN to do shift work/local work. I know a number that just stick to American time, and work 7pm-3am to save themselves jet lag and breaking family contact for too long. It wouldn't work for a long placement, but for a two week visit it can be surprisingly effective. Or organising to go abroad at 2 days notice. Admittedly this tends to be more students than academics, mostly because the academics organise it and subsequently forget to tell the students. But this being science we do it anyway because its fucking hilarious. The problem being that when you land you sometimes find yourself in the correct time-zone to start work straight away! Not so fun after a 3 hour flight however. But luckily everyone's in the same boat so you can get a lot of slack cut for you. But even then the constant movement can quite effectively fuck up your body clock for a couple of days. Of course this not just being physical, but mentally you can get a bit screwed up. After being in Southampton for 3 days I've only just properly gotten it into my head that yes, I am in Southampton, not Geneva. And subsequently I'll probably have the same happen when I go to Denmark and then onto Cyprus. Sometimes it just comes one big blur of events which you just attach to auto-pilot and mull through with all the grace and glory of a elephant through an ants nest. Fortunately I have an awesomely understanding and similarly insane group of friends so imprompetu jokes about incest and stealing noses are generally taken well.

On a slightly more peculiar topic, one of the more curious topics that comes up amongst my fellows is what kind of effect our work has on the world around us. Not the outcome of our work (that would be an encyclopedia by itself), but rather the things we have cause as a by product. Look at all those flights I'm taking. That's probably my entire years allotment of greenhouse gas emissions in one week. I can eat as little meat and local produce as I want (by the way, I recommend the concept of weekday vegetarianism, its surprisingly easy and beans are awesome), but those planes will shit all over the global warming side of it (but hell, I'm helping to prevent soil and ground water wastage as well so I'm still in the net benefits I think). But on the other hand I also do a hell of a lot to spread humanities knowledge (in a roundabout way). Of course this would all by a hell of lot easier if Europe put together an expansive high speed rail network, but that's a work in progress in all likelihood.

So, as I jump on the plane to Aarhus, here's hoping I get to spend a bit longer somewhere soon. It'd be nice to feel a bit at home somewhere again. But maybe I've got decades to do that. Here's to living out of a backpack me hearties! For the long or short of it.