In Case You Were Wondering Why Your Taxes are so Rediculously High

Well, it's the end of a busy time for Jane and I. We just completed our first grant proposals! Very exciting! A grant, proposal, incidentally, is when we ask the taxpayer (i.e. you) to give us hundreds of thousands of dollars (in my case more than half a million) for our research. I can't promise that it'll be worth it, but I know that we can't do our work without it - and this is how much it costs. Why? Because the companies that supply researchers know that they are the only ones to offer their kind of specialist equipment, and so they can charge pretty much whatever they want. And they do. A good example is the main piece of equipment in my laboratory, which is a mass spectrometer. The specific instrument I 'applied' for is a Micromass LCT, which is an entry level machine. In fact, it's probably the cheapest on the market. And the cost for this 3' x 3' x 3' box? $350,000 - the same as a reasonably sized house. But sometimes a scientist can cheat the system. This occurs when the instrument we need happens to be something that industry uses. Industry, you see, doesn't typically have access to government cash and the prices charged to them by suppliers reflects that. This is the situation for another instrument in my lab, called a VersaLaser, which is basically a laser printer on steroids. This baby doesn't just burn toner, it can cut into plastics, wood and etch metal and glass. The price for this cool piece of equipment? A pretty reasonable $15,000.
Jane's application process is relatively simple (well, it's alot of paperwork and, to be honest, nothing is actually simple in the funding game) - she is applying to NSERC for a 'Discovery Grant' which is to support her staffing and operations costs. Most of this will be to pay for grad student and post-doc 'trainees'. The bulk of her equipment costs will come out of her 'startup' grant which is provided to her by the university. As for me, I've got to buy lots of expensive equipment. Really big stuff you get from a 'Canadian Foundation for Innovation' (CFI) grant, which is bit of a funny thing because they only give you 40% of the money. Another 40% comes from a matching provincial grant (called the premier's research award or somesuch) and the 20% has to come from somewhere else, usually a vendor 'discount'. I say 'discount' (in quotes) because what this means is that the vendor overcharges by ~20% and then discounts it. The rest of my equipment (a lot of little stuff, <7000$) gets worked into a Discovery Grant application.
In any case, we've sent our grant applications out (through the York Office of Research, the proposals have to be read over and signed by the dean and the department head). Fingers crossed. And now you know (one of the many reasons) why your taxes are so high...

Places I've Been: Bulgaria

I think that, before I start describing this trip, I should first explain what made this particular journey possible. When I was in Second year, Debbie stopped by my room (well, Paul's room, actually, but his was right beside mine and I am nosy) to tell us that there was a new arrival over in the nunnery (the 'girls only' section of Lady Eaton College at Trent - believe me I was a don and they were anything but nuns over there...). So we went over to meet this 'Mira' girl. We knocked, she opened the door and there she was. 'Pretty', I thought (no, not in that way - I was attached and unnasailably monogamous). I didn't know it from her cheeky grin, but at that moment, she was thinking 'who's this overconfident overbearing guy? Probably a Jerk'. In any case, over the next little while, we eventually were thrown together enough to get over our (her) initial predjudices and are now good friends. I realized that Mira is one of the smartest people I know, and Mira realized that my overconfidence and overbearingness can be borne.
Flash foreward five or six years and Mira is coming to visit us in the UK before heading off for a rare summer trip to see her parents in Bulgaria. She says 'wanna come with?' and to her surprise (and, possibly, dismay), we say 'yes!'. And we're off. British airways is one of three european carriers that make regular flights to Sofia, Bulgaria.
First of all, let me say that I was very excited to get to see an eastern bloc country. And that none of this would have been possible without Mira and her parents generously offering to be our guides. Their combined efforts made our trip absolutely spectacular. Their attitude towards hospitality was absolute - whatever we needed (or wanted, even) was immediately offered without hestitation of expectation of reciprocation.

And now with the trip. We touched down in the afternoon. I should say that flying over Sofia was interesting in itself. Mira mentioned that virtually all of the buildings were residential because it never occured to the soviets to build anything else. And boy was it true. You could instantly see the origanisational difference between most european cities and Sofia - even from the air. We got our first glimpse of Bulgarian - Bulgarian interpersonal interactions when Mira went to talk to the passport control guy. The contrast was stark. All of the warmth that is normally in her voice was gone, replaced with a flat, efficient and slightly annoyed tone. This, it turns out, is the normal conversational tone among unrelated Sofians.

Mira's parents picked us up at the airport and we got our first look at the city. From what Mira had fille our heads with about her homeland, we expected something along the lines of Dresden circa 1946. But what we saw was more like a typical European city. OK, maybe a little more run-down but far from a disaster zone. And everwhere there were signs of investment. I'm sure I'm going to harp on this point constantly throughout this post, but, I cannot describe the amount of new money pouring into this system that was for so long starved for cash. This investment is in anticipation of Bulgaria joining the European union. And investors aren't the only ones in anticipation - the minitry of foreign affairs has a clock that is counting down the days.

We stopped off at Mira's parent's place to drop off our stuff before taking a walk around the neighbourhood. The picture on the right is of us in the courtyard behind the Bachvarova's appatment. If it looks nice, that is because it is. It even has a completely useless, 24 hour security service (which is a way of paying off organized criminals not to rob the place). We also got to see a lot of 'history of Mira' type places, including her kindergarden (pictured left with the protagonist), high school, english school and the park where she got robbed. Plus we saw the russian embassy (which is like - no - is a big evil fortress) , a kind of statue thingy that was sortof made to comemorate nothing and is pretty indescribable (but cool).

That night we went out for an authentic Bulgarian... pizza. Yep, the bulgarians do love their Pizza. Sofia is kindof built into the side of a mountain chain and the place was up the hill a bit. I should mention that most bulgarian restaurants (inlcluding this one) have english menus. They are definitely ready for european tourists, but they get few enough that europeans (and north americans) are an exciting curiosity. They absolutely love foreigners. The next day was to be our 'Big Day Out' in Sofia. Mira gave us an excellent tour of the city. We started off at Mira's old university. Now picture a soviet classroom. I'm going to guess that you probably came up with something like this (right). We also saw about a billion other things including the national library (which has a big statue of the brothers (religious) responsible for introducing the Bulgarian alphabet), but the real highlight was a trip to the top of a mountain that overlooks Sofia. We hopped on a 1960's era soviet ski lift, which was a little scary, but not too bad, to get to the top. This gave us an excellent view of the city, but the best view was from the chairlift on the way down (left). Then it was back into the city center.

We saw way too much stuff to describe here in detail, but here's the gist: There was the Gia Sofia (a small, but for some reason very famous cathedral), the very large St. Peters (right), the parliament, the Bulgarian academy of science (left, with the three of us in front of it), the eastern orthodox cathedral, the military building, the St. Sofia statue, a chruch built beside roman ruins (in the middle of the city), a giant stadium and the national theater. I should say that Sofia seemed very organized, and very european, with the exception of the occarional pack of wild dogs. Public transit looked to be in good shape, the Bulgarians having recently purchased a whole fleet of 'slightly used' vehicles from Germany.

But there's more. That night, we went to a real traditional Bulgarian restaurant. Now, the bulgarian diet is very much to my liking especially in that it is heavy on the meat. This restaurant had a dish that was aptly named, the 'master's platter' and, being the deeply insecure man that I am, I had to have it. The 'master's platter' consisted of I think almost 1Kg of meat with a few vegetables interspersed. Perfect. The next day was our trip to the second largest city in Bulgaria, Plovdiv.

People from Sofia think that people from Plovdiv are much nicer than they are. Since everyone was nice to us, I'll have to take their word for it. Plovdiv was a pretty city built on trade with an excellent old city (right) and roman theater (the first one I've ever seen, actually, left). Again, we saw way too much stuff to describe in any detail, but here are a few pictures to give you an idea.

On our last day, before we had to go to the airport, we visited the national museum. This was built in the house of the old dictator, who was selected by the soviets on the basis of his low level of intelligence. Because stupid people are good at blind loyalty. Very Orwellian. Anyhoo, the museum had all kinds of interesting artifacts, although the biggest item (the thracian treasure) was off on display somewhere near the balck sea. A depiction of a thracian grave is to the left. There were items associated with the other major periods of Bulgarian history as well including when they were under the 'Turkish yoke' that was the ottaman empire, soviet rule and eventual liberation.

Then it was Bulgaria adieu. Seriously, one of the best trips ever. If you have a bulgarian friend, highly recommend forcing them to show you around their homeland. To Mira's parents, you were the best hosts ever - when you are next in Canada, expect to be wined and dined. And Mira, well, we may not be able to play hosts for you on a Canadian trip (you know about 10x more about Canada than we do), but I'm sure we can think of something.

Happy trails.

Derek's Guide to Maximization of the Buffet Experience. And Survival...

Well, after waiting for months, Jane and I finally did it. And it was indescribably good. Transcendental, you might say. More on that in a moment...

The Red Hot Buffet just recently opened in place of what used to be our favorite restaurant here, the Magic Tower. This is in keeping with what we have come to call 'the curse'. That is, any restaurant that we describe as 'our favorite' closes within a few months. We first noticed 'the curse' in London with the closure of the best source of chili fries in southwest Ontario, the Five and Diner. Then it was my favorite Thai place, 'Satay on the Road' (well, ok, it isn't closed, but it's new management changed the Pad Thai recipe and so it's closed as far as I'm concerned). And now the Magic Tower, at which two plates of greasy bar food could be had for the price of one.

Eventually, though, we decided that we had mourned long enough and decided to give the new place a try. The Red Hot Buffet is a sortof eastern oriented place with food from india, asia (particularly thai, but also chinese) and... Italy. Ecclectic. In any case, it's a buffet and, after years of honing my expertise, I thought I would take the opportunity to pass on few vital tips.

1) And this is important: Eat as quickly as possible. The faster your food intake is compared to your rising blood sugar, the more you can eat before the sick feeling starts.
2) Make sure that food is chewed to the least possible extent before swallowing. Provided that you don't choke, this will minimize the amount of food that your body actually digests and consequently the amount of weight you put on.
3) Start and end with the meat.
4) In between, do have something with fiber (I suggest snow peas). This will save you some trouble down the road.
5) Do not eat the salad. This is a waste of stomach capacity that is better reserved for meat products.
6) Do not drink pop. This expands your stomach with useless CO2 gas, again, reducing precious stomach capacity. Instead, have water with lemon.The water will flush your stomach through and the lemon will help emulsify the fat.
7) It's time for dessert when you feel slightly uncomfortably full. If this is after anything less than three plates you are not a man.
8) When eating dessert, use the 'reverse glycemic index technique'. This means that you start with the natural sugars (i.e. fruit) to medium refinement (i.e. cakes, fruit covered in chocolate) to totally refined, concentrated sugar (i.e. candy floss, syrup, supersweet chocolate etc.). This ensures that all of the sugars hit your blood at the same time, which, if it doesn't kill you, will give you the hell of a rush.
9) For the next 8 hours or so, it is important to avoid all physical activity. This will allow your digetive system to work through the 'input' with maximum efficiency.

Happy buffet...ing.

Good and Bad Science Fiction

Science fiction is my favorite literary genre. Actually no... Good science fiction is my favorite literary genre. This is as opposed to the entirely different genre of bad science fiction. Whats the difference? Well, let's take Star Trek, for example. In the first series, no matter what else was happening, the audience was assured a horribly unrealistic fistfight between kirk and some aliens, plus an equally unrealistic love scene between him and some female aliens. That has all the hallmarks of bad science fiction - basically a midless action movie with lazers instead of machine guns. But actually, it's good science fiction in disquise. That's because, in addition to the dumb stuff that the studio execs wanted, Gene Rodenbury managed to sneak in some (rather basic, admittedly) examinations of the human condition. Forget the 'new ground' that they're so proud of having broken (i.e. Kirk (white) kisses Uhura (Black), Chekov is Russian etc.), it's actually in plots like "The Enemy Within". In this one, Kirk is split into good and evil versions of himself. Now this could be very stupid, except that the writers take pains to point out that the evil Kirk, while generally a bastard, is actually more useful under some circumstances than the fluffy and indecesive 'good' Kirk. It does a pretty good job of making the point that people's 'dark side' is what gives them their will. Which explains why successful people (politicians, buisinessmen etc.) are also so often jerks.
Still, though, the original series was pretty much cheese with the seeds of brilliance. It was the next series, Star Trek:The Next Generation, which was and remains the only truly successful good science fiction TV series. The first thing they did right was to hire Patrick Stewart in the lead role. He's phenominal, but he had help from the best TV science fiction writing ever. Highlights were "Darmok" in which an alien Captain kidnaps Picard in the hopes that it will force their species to communicate, "Outcast" which is a clever commentary on tolerance towards gay people, "Chain of Command" in which is reminiscent of '1984', plus a whole lot of others.
Unfortunately, from there it was all downhill. Many people liked the next series, Deep Space 9, but I didn't. Because they dropped most of the intellectual stuff and replaced it with warriors handling, you guessed it, moslty really big laser guns. The next two series tried to recapture the old 'exploration of humanity' premise, but with only moderate success.
Sad.

Places I've been: Milan

Possibly the best thing about living in Europe is the ease withn which you can get pretty much anywhere in the EU. So when Jane came up to me and said 'let's go somewhere in a couple weeks, say... Italy' it was really no problem at all. I think the flight cost something like 35 pounds each return. Still, though it's a little worrysome heading off to a place where you can't speak the language. Knowing french doesn't help, let me tell you, because your guesses based on French inevitably come out as spanish. Fortunately Doug and Kristina had recently been to Sicilly and had some handy phrase books to lend us. In any case, here's how the trip went.

Moments after finding our hotel, we were seized by the irresistable urge to get some Gelato. Not the crappy frozen concentrated fruit juice stuff that you find in North America, no. True, chocolaty, creamy, caramelly, vanilla-y gellato. So very tasty. Looking around, we realized that Milan being the 'fashion capital of the world' is no joke. People dress up to walk their dog, and I'm pretty sure that I passed one or more emaciated super-model types in our travels.

Our first day, we walked into the center of town, passing through the Castello Sforzesco, which is an architechtually interesting castle built by one of Machiavelli's 'Princes', Francesco Sforza. The walls were full of regularly spaced holes. We tried to figure out why this was, but, after discarding the easy options of defense and drainage, we gave up. The palace is centrally located and houses a number of museums which, for reasons of cost and time, we neglected. At the back of the castle is a very nice 47 hectaire park, which we walked around in for a while... unti

l Jane started sniffing.

The next big thing to see in Milan is the Duomo, which is a truly massive (second largest in fact, next to St. Peters) and very ornate cathedral. It was, unfortunately, undergoing renovations, so we didn't really get to see the whole facade, but it was very impressive nonetheless. The inside was nice. Sortof the standard cathedral fare with chapels etc. They are a bit picky in Italy about adequate church atire. Don't expect to get in if you don't have your thighs and cleavage chastely covered. Now, the Duomo is right downtown, which is a bad place to be if you need to pee. When we finally found a bathroom, it was guarded. 2 Euros. No

kidding. We then went to see 'the last supper'. Unfortunately, it turned out that, if you want to see the last supper, you have to book three months in advance. So that was a no go. But we did see the church in which 'the last supper' is housed, which is actually quite pretty.

The next day we did what I like best. That is, walk around. Alot. We climbed a hill that was on the north side of town and got sortof a view around the city. It was in a nice park, but, unfortunately the hill wasn't really high. Lots of cranes. Milan is a growing city. That evening we had our big dinner out. Even though we were 'splurging', we didn't want to get a 'complete italian meal'. That is because restaurants in Milan devide dinner into 4 parts (antipasti, primiri, secondi insalada, and then desert), each of which costs as much as a full meal anywhere else. So Jane got a 'primiri' pasta and I got a 'secondi' meat dish which (I think quite reasonably) I expected to be cooked. Actually it was not (see right). But you know me. I ate it anyway and I can honestly say it was the best raw meat I've ever had.

Before we 'took off' on our last day, we visited the botanical gardens, which were really more of a parc. It was a nice spot, so we thought we'd hang around a bit and read under a tree. Unfortunately the tree was raining pollen on us and, while my immune system remained blissfully unaware, Jane's started to get the heeby jeebys. She toughed it out for about 20 minutes but, eventually, shaking our fists at the tree in a very italian fashion, we had to leave. We got one last look at the downtown, inlcuding the europe's skiniest office building, and got on a bus for the airport.

If you're thinking of heading over to Milan, here are a few pointers:
1) There's actually not that much to see. You can do most of it in a day.
2) Pizza is the only reasonably priced meal
3) There is a chance that you will see a super model and, if you are very lucky, boobs.
4) It is too dangerous for people to drive around in cars, so they take mopeds
5) If you are hinking of a spur of the moment trip to see the last supper, don't.
6) You will not find lasanga anywhere (except 'fake' lasanga at a fast food pasta joint)

Happy trails...