Your Mother Knits Socks in Hell

That's right folks, I'm going to need an intervention, or as the lovely Carolin put it earlier, a positivist exorcism. She reckoned that Anita would be only too happy to help. Séamas could probably be called in for a spot of heavy lifting, if required.

Sweet Jesus, people... I've mentioned the sense of alienation and feeling like a complete outsider before, but I have just spent 3 hours undergoing the most immense cognitive dissonance I have ever experienced IN MY LIFE! (and I've had two kids, and all my illusions of being an Earth Mother shattered when the reality of children failed to meet my vaguely hippy expectations)

I've been listening to a very well-respected man lead a seminar on Quality Improvement and here are some of the more memorable quotes...

"he said 'in my experience'... pure subjective recall... he just made it up!"

"if you're an experienced practitioner, something happens in your brain, [sarcastically] you're touched by the hand of God... 'I know the right thing to do and this guarantees the best possible outcome'"

"If I know the algorithm and the seed point, I can tell you exactly what's going to happen"

I'm railing against it now, but this is only Day 1 of a three-day course. Next week, I'm sitting in on another two-day course and the following week, there's a full five days. I'm either going to end up as a drooling, gibbering vegetable (back to the cabbage analogy) or I'm going to crack under the pressure and start talking. Now, to be honest, I don't think that this is really the right time or place for me to present an alternative view, i.e. mine, but what if I can't help myself? They'll think I'm a cabbage and have me committed anyway.

More on this later. Perhaps.

Eat the Cabbage

I used to blog fairly regularly and then I fell out of the habit. So now I have decided that it is time to start again.

'Researcher in Exile' is where I will keep some sort of open field journal relating to my research and my life. (In fact, I have lately found myself wondering if the two are actually different. The jury's still out on that one.) My exile is a strange and multi-faceted thing: self-imposed; a reward; a burden; physical; mental; conceptual; theoretical; practical; hypothetical; emotional; material.

I knew that I would face homesickness and that I would miss my family (and sometimes, being so far away causes me physical pain). What I did not expect to miss the people in my research network so much! At home, I would often go several weeks without physically seeing one of them, but we would be in regular contact by phone, skype or IM. I've still got that regular electronic contact with them. But now, I find myself surrounded by people who understand the world from a very different perspective to mine.

On the surface, there are only superficial differences between here and home. In fact, I quite like it here. On a conceptual level, however, I feel like I am marooned on an island with a village full of vegetarians, and I'm the cabbage! I want the cabbage to grow; they want to eat the cabbage.