Starting work, good weather, house hunting, etc

I officially started in the Lucas lab two weeks ago, on April 13th.  It's exciting to be surrounded by bright people with expertise very different from my own studying the molecules, cells, tissues and organs that allow us to see: opsins, photoreceptor cells, neurons, the retina... all of this new to me.  For a little while, at least, I'm the new guy, and I get a pass to ask really stupid questions and make people explain all the acronyms they throw around.  Sure, I could google most of those things on my own time, but it's much more fun to hear another human explain it in their own words.
Importantly, the people in the lab are all fun, and the group has great camaraderie.

Over the past two weeks, Laurel and I have been looking for a bigger, quieter, greener place to live.  Currently we're living in a smallish apartment across from a mall in the center of town.  Our neighborhood, the Northern Quarter, is really fun: lots of cute/hip bars, restaurants, cafes, tea shops, etc.  Mostly charming older buildings.  There is a small grocery store on the corner of our block, so if we run out of a particular ingredient in the middle of cooking a meal, you can get it and be back in ~3 minutes.  There's something thrilling about that proximity and convenience, especially to us who grew up in places where we would drive everywhere.  So it's very fun in many ways to live where we do now, but it is also very noisy (trams and buses directly below our window, as well as the hoots and hollers of drunken revellers) and there is disappointingly little greenery in most of central Manchester.  The view from our apartment is a parking structure.
We've been looking to the green southern edges of Manchester, in particular the neighborhoods of Chorlton and Didsbury.  Manchester is no San Francisco, but good places here get snapped up very quickly, almost always on the first day they come on the market.  After many unproductive viewings, I'm happy to report that we have officially applied for a very nice semi-detached* house in the Trafford neighborhood, a 15 min walk or 7 min bike ride north of Chorlton.  Just wait 'til you see the yard!  The house is near a nice park, and on the day we viewed the house the cherry trees in the park happened to be in full bloom, against a clear blue sky.  The park certainly helped us make up our minds to apply for the house.

*"semi-detached" = duplex.  Why not "semi-attached"? "terrace house" = rowhome.

Waldo shirt!

Panorama!  Nice photos, Samsung Galaxy S6!

London: the rest of our trip

The great weather continued for the rest of our London visit, so we ended up walking through parks most of the time.  The museums can wait for a rainy day.

Day 2: Laurel had a bit of work to take care of in the morning, so we didn't get moving until around 2:00.  Rented bikeshare bikes ("Boris Bikes") and rode to Regent's Park.  I started reading Mrs. Dalloway shortly before moving to Manchester, and finished it on our trip to London, so I was keen to visit all the sites mentioned therein.  We saw some beautiful and exotic waterfowl there, which we were thrilled to add to Laurel's bird list.  Then we saw more and more exciting species that we couldn't identify, until eventually it dawned on us that there was no way all these ducks could be there naturally.  Turns out it's basically a zoo for waterfowl.  Had to strike out those items in the List.

so many ducks, so exotic!

Thanks to reverse image search on google images, we learned that this is a Red-breasted goose (endangered), which breeds in arctic Siberia and winters in the Black Sea.  Not the UK.

We did see a mandarin duck later in the day, and those guys have gone feral in the UK, so maybe it counts, maybe not.  But it doesn't really matter, mandarin ducks are so beautiful you just enjoy them for what they are and don't worry about bird listing.

Mandarin duck 

Laurel here: In addition to the exotic birds, we saw delightful behavio(u)r demonstrated by a familiar local species, the humble coot. Coots were pairing up and preparing for future cootlings all over the place. One coot we saw was hiding in the reeds; when we looked closer, we saw she was sitting on a nest full of eggs! Another coot was assiduously fetching sticks for his nest-sitting mate. He'd paddle over to a clump of reeds, grab a stick with his beak, paddle it back to his mate, "beak" it to her, then she would grab it with her beak and place it onto the nest. So sweet! <3 Ok, now back over to Ed.

Coot on nest with eggs

Our only plan for the evening was dinner and a play, both in Soho.  After a few hours in the park, we walked south, making a short detour to visit a fancy tea shop we order from regularly (Postcard Teas). We didn't have time to sit and sip several steeps of tea, so we moved on quickly.  But right around the corner was a very slick boutique devoted to dates.  Yep, the dried desert fruit.
Background: I've never been wild about dates, but I've also never thought much about them or had a chance to try any that are supposed to be special.  As we all know, preconceptions about quality strongly impact our appreciation of food or drink (here's where we all invoke those studies we vaguely remember reading about where wine experts were tricked into highly rating a wine based on reported price, or thought the white wine + food coloring was red wine, or something like that).  So I was curious to see whether I would really like dates if I had a chance to pay a lot of money for them! I also love doing samplings of several types of simple foods, like cheeses, olive oils, fruits.  One of my favorite food party tricks is to give people tastes of two different single origin chocolates (like Rogue Chocolatier's Balao and Sambirano) and then reveal that each bar only has two ingredients: cocoa and sugar, and the dramatic flavor difference is due to cocoa variety alone.
Back to our story: I asked the lady behind the counter: what's the deal with this place? in my best broad, folksy, loud american accent.  "Is from Saudi" she replied in a vaguely foreign accent.  Okay! We'll take 2 each of the 8 different varieties on offer, please!  It only came to £10, so not too extravagant.
We then made a quick stop at Whole Foods and picked up some rice cakes and black sesame/tamari rice crackers that we can't find in MCR.  With our bag of eccentric groceries in hand, we had a tasty dumpling dinner at Yuatcha, then hurried to the theater for a stage adaptation of Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, with a 4 person cast.  All of the bit parts were played by just two actors, who were the real stars of the show, which essentially was a celebration of old timey slapstick stage comedy.  Very fun, completely unserious.  We tried a few of the dates when we got back to the apartment: some delicious, others kind of dry and starchy.  But the good ones were very good, and had distinct flavors.

Day 3: Cinnamon buns at Nordic Bakery in the morning.  Yum!

Walked through Hyde Park, where I spied a green woodpecker (a new bird for Laurel's list) and ended up at Kensington Palace.  Nice park, but palace not a big draw.

The name of this sculpture is "Physical Energy"

 Back east and down to Buckingham Palace, where we saw the gates open up and a fancy car drive inside (possibly conveying a Royal! gasp!) which really added to my Mrs. Dalloway tourist experience.  Tube to Borough Market for a late lunch, then crossed over the river for Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, and the Temple, which was neat to me as both the son of lawyer and someone who's read almost all of the Rumpole of the Bailey books.  Dinner at Nopi, an Ottolenghi restaurant.  Far and away our best meal in London.

Day 4: We spent most of the day at Kew Gardens, which are great.

The diagonal palm-looking tree here is a cycad that was planted at Kew in 1775!  This individual is very old, but cycads are very old in evolutionary terms, having persisted since the time of the dinosaurs.

In bird news, I saw a goldcrest which is like the UK equivalent of a kinglet.  Super cute.  We also observed some very dramatic behavior at a small island in a pond where several waterfowl were nesting.  Our attention was first attracted by a nesting swan, who we saw rearranging her eggs.  I then heard a coot start squawking as a crow landed on the island.  I thought to myself: I wonder if that crow is trying to steal an egg?  Why don't the other birds chase it off?  The coot realizes this is a threat!  And just then the crow picked up a medium egg (goose egg?) from an unguarded nest and flew off!  Daylight robbery!

 Got some sustainably harvested cod and haddock fried to order at Golden Union, then hopped on a 9:00 pm train back to Manchester.  Polished off Mrs. Dalloway, then started in on H is for Hawk.

London:  5 stars.  Would visit again.

At the Kensington Palace gardens.

Since then: got a new phone with a UK contract over the weekend, so I feel more and more like a legitimate resident here.  Officially started work at my new lab on Monday.  Laurel and I have been intensively house hunting, no luck yet.

Ed and Laurel visit London, or, Dry Days in London, part 1

Yesterday we arrived in London for a 3-night visit.  I have never been to London.  I visited Laurel in Manchester at least 5 times between 2012 and 2014, always on direct flights between PHL and MAN.  We always talked about squeezing in a visit to London, but it never happened.  I have visited other places in the UK (Oxford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool) but always as part of postdoc lab exploratory visits.  Now that I've moved to the country it was high time to pay a visit to the metropolis.  We got really lucky with the weather: forecast calls for warm, sunny days and clear skies.  A bit like when I visited Seattle and had nothing but sunshine and heat.

We arrived around noon and checked in immediately at the apartment we booked through Air BnB (a large, sunny place in the Bloomsbury neighborhood) and the host gave us a quick tour of the neighborhood.  We walked through several pretty squares and gardens (my favorite in this area was St. Georges Gardens), picked up lunch at Fork and ate it in Tavistock Square, on a bench near the Ghandi statue.

Tavistock Square, Ed's on the second bench from the left.

Next: Russell Square, a quick stop at the British Museum, which was completely full of French schoolchildren, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, another place I lusted for during my bout of cerebral trypanosomiasis.

Onwards to Covent Garden, where I started to feel some sun fatigue.  Ice water, apple juice and a short rest later, we resumed our trek to the Thames, but after that I had to use Laurel's compact umbrella as a parasol.  Somerset House, my first view of the Thames, Victoria Embankment Gardens, Whitehall: now we were really In London.

A wood mouse we saw in Victoria Embankment Gardens

We zigzagged up to Trafalgar Square and down to Westminster and came to rest on a bench in Victoria Tower Gardens overlooking the river.

Edwardus in front of monumental gate

Laurel in Trafalgar Square

The levitators of Trafalgar Square. From right (back to front): levitating Yoda, levitating silver man, levitating witch, levitating silver man, Yoda on a smoke break

The clear blue skies and evening light made all the famous buildings look especially beautiful.  We felt very lucky to be there.

Laurel in front of a clock tower

Both of us!

We made reservations for dinner (Great Queen Street), where we were able to enjoy our dinner in the lingering evening light.  Both meals we had that day were excellent, would highly recommend.  Back home and straight to bed, full and exhausted.

A dry day in Hope Valley: Mam Tor hike report

On Easter Sunday, we went for a hike in the Peak District, a quick 40 min train ride east of Manchester.  Fitted out in our hiking boots* and matching vintage Penn School of Medicine fleece jackets, we got to the train station in time for the first train of the day (holiday schedule, 9:20 AM).  A block before the station we spied another couple in rugged boots and outdoor gear, and by the time we got to the platform there was a crowd of 40 or so hikers: young and old, in flimsy sneakers and in heavy, mud caked boots and gaiters.  I felt a bit of the tribe-gathering thrill I get when I board Septa to go to a Phillies game or see other people with poster tubes when I fly to a big conference.

We detrained at Hope and set off for Castleton.  Our goal for the day: hike a 6 mile loop around the head of the Hope Valley, including Lose Hill, Back Tor, Mam Tor and Peveril Castle at the end, then a hearty dinner of cliche English food in a touristy pub.  My mouth was already watering thinking about fish and chips.  We walked along the main road from Hope to Castleton, which was okay, but the cars whizzing past detracted from the experience.  Later we discovered that there's a public footpath through farmland that we could have taken instead.  Lesson: consult the Ordnance Survey map closely first!

In Castleton.

It's spring, which means Lambing Season, of course.  There were loads of adorable lambs snoozing, eating, nursing and gambolling.

About half way up Lose Hill (yes, there is a Win Hill nearby!)  Check out those sunbeams!

We finally got to the top of Lose Hill, our first climb of the day, which felt like the hardest.  The climb was warm and mild, but when we got to the top we felt the cold, steady wind that seems to blow across the moors perpetually.  Behind me you can see the path leading to Back Tor, with Mam Tor in the distance.

On the Posing Stone on Back Tor, where people have taken triumphant hike photos since neolithic times.

Descending Back Tor.

Laurel: "That horse is so emo!"

Great photo, Laurel!  This was taken somewhere after Mam Tor.  We ate our snacks and took a short, pleasant nap on the hillside, but didn't take any notable pictures.

We returned to Castleton around 4:00 pm and paid the steep (pun intended) £4.80 admission to climb up to Peveril Castle.  A bit of background here: there is a pub in Manchester called Peveril of the Peaks, named after the Walter Scott novel, in turn named after this castle.  The pub has a beautiful yellow and chartreuse tile exterior, and has been one of my favorite Manchester sights since my first visit here in 2012.  We couldn't pass up an opportunity to see the original.

At 5:00 we decided to skip the pub dinner in the country and head straight back to town instead.  We thought we had more than enough time to walk back to Hope Station for the 5:41 train.  We took the public footpath back.  Around 5:35, we were close to the station, but not quite there yet and got nervous.  We started walking fast, then ran, just to see the train pull away from the station at 5:39. It was early, we were late!  2 hours until the next train!  We were very tired at this point, and didn't really feel like walking back to town for the dinner we'd earlier decided we didn't want.  But 2 hours of sitting still seemed like a bad choice.  So we walked back to town, skipped the Hope Valley Beer Festival and the local pub (reeking of cigarette smoke) and picked up supplies for a picnic at a micro Spar.  I talked Laurel into taking the scenic route back to the station (a series of public access footpaths I found on the trusty Ordnance Survey map) which turned out to be fantastic.  The sun was setting behind a cloudbank, we were away from the noise and smog of the road and the other tourists that crowd Mam Tor and Castleton.  Just birds, stream burbling, and sheep, including these little guys:

That first tangerine of our picnic dinner was, naturally, the most delicious thing I've ever eaten.  Nothing beats hike food.  We stuffed ourselves on bread, salami, a local brand of cottage cheese with chives, olives, crisps, grapes and tangerines.  Hopped on the 7:41 train exhausted and happy.



*Thanks to Dave and Kacy for Ed's boots!

Meeting the new lab, hacking Red Chilli

Earlier this week I got to meet most of my new lab (mostly not pictured here!) over a leisurely lunch at Red Chilli, a chinese restaurant near campus.  The lab seems great, very welcoming and fun. Later I met with a few of them individually, and even got to see a multi-electrode array recording from an ex-vivo retina as it was exposed to various patterns of light.  Very cool!  It's exciting, refreshing, and a bit scary to join a lab where the questions, techniques and model systems are so different from what I have worked on in the past.

A few more thoughts on Red Chilli.  Laurel has been at Manchester for over two years now, and has eaten here almost ten times, usually with a visiting speaker or as part of a big group.  I think every university has a restaurant or two like this: the place that is so close and easy for groups that you end up there over and over, even though the food isn't quite good enough that you'd travel out of your way to eat it.  I think of these restaurants as a puzzle to be cracked.  Since you know you're going there again and again, you may as well figure out an optimal order.  One of the running themes of this blog will be my explorations of the Red Chilli menu.

Red Chilli report 1: The lab wanted a long, decadent lunch, so we ordered from the 3-item prix fixe lunch menu. I chose 1) Beijing Hot & Sour Soup, 2) Beijing Minced Pork & Prawn Dumplings, and 3) Mrs Spotty Beancurd with Minced Beef.
Results:
Soup was fine, indeed sour and slightly spicy, rich with corn starch and studded with a few small shrimp and, as one labmate described them, "ham cuboids."  Not bad, but wouldn't order again.
Dumplings were great!  These appeared to be boiled.  Tasty filling, with some broth.  Would definitely order again.
Mrs. Spotty was recommended by Laurel, as the closest thing to mapo tofu, one of our favorite dishes.  This tasted like it was just chunks of tofu with fermented black beans and ground sichuan peppercorn in a thin sauce, with bland ground beef.  No green onion!  Not bad, but doesn't make it to the next round.

First post!

Hello friends,

On my third day in Manchester, no rain fell.  It was sunny and clear most of the day, and the red brick buildings looked beautiful against the blue sky.  I decided now was the time to start a record of my experiences here in this new (to me) country.  About the rain... I'm from LA, where rain is so rare that it always feels like a special occassion.  Now I'm living in a city where, according to http://www.holiday-weather.com/manchester/averages/ , it rains 265 days a year.  That's greater than 70%!  According to the same site, LA gets only 37 rainy days a year, although I feel like even this might be an overestimate.  So one could dwell on all the gray, rainy days here, and Manchester suffers a pretty poor weather reputation even within the UK, I want to focus on the positive in this here.  The dry days, the sunny moments between rain showers, and even the feeling, deep down in my desert memory, that rain itself is a good thing and shouldn't be taken for granted.