Worky work work

People are always telling me this....one day I'll get away with it.

An ex boyfriend of mine once reliably informed me that if you are stuck out in the cold and need to share body heat to get warm then you do...in fact...need to be completely naked for it to work efficiently. This was after he'd taken me to the country park at midnight and stolen my bus pass.....I'm not sure what he was hoping to achieve, we'd only been seeing each other a week.

Minor catch-up in the life of Becki....everything is going simply swimmingly at the moment! Close friends will know that things at work are picking up! I've been in my role of 'Operations Officer/Estates and Laboratory Management Team Member' for about 3 years now. When I asked about the chance of progression at my interview (having reassured Bruce that I wasn't after his job) I was faced with much umming and ahhing and told that there are no definite lines of progression. I didn't really mind this too much at the time, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do or how long I would stay, so I was just happy to take the job and figure it out from there.

Turns out that UCL sucks you in, it sucks you in and never spits you out. There are people I work with who studied for their BSc's here and never left, they've been a round for nigh on 40 years! I admire that kind of dedication, and if you're enjoying your job then it's fantastic, but after a while you do tend to fall into one of 3 categories:

1) Happy but stagnating

2) Stagnating and institutionalised

3) Flexible and happy

Some people are happy to continue doing the job they're doing forever and that's cool. Some people are resigned to the fact that they have been and will be doing the same job forever, but have been here so long that the thought of getting a job elsewhere is too much effort, or far too scary. And (I know, never start a sentence with an 'and', I'm a rule breaker, get over it), some people have the balance, a place like UCL changes over time, you've gotta move with the times instead of standing stubbornly in the past. UCL is proud of it's past, but as Darwin knew, evolution is inevitable, evolve or die. Some people (the minority and usually the ones who don't take themselves too seriously) can do this. My lovely Lindar is one of them...technician/reasearch assistant.....admin/estates...immunohistochemist, and she's still very happy, will be happier soon, but I'll leave that there for now.

I was in danger of becoming a number 1) *snort*, I think. I very much enjoy my job, the people around me make it for me, I was happy pootling along doing my thang. I like to think that at some point I'd have woken up and thought 'hang on, where did the last ten years go?' but this place sings you a lullaby and it can be 30 years before you know it!

Anyway, recently things have been changing a bit, I've been taken under a wing so to speak, there is exciting training coming up which will adorn me with a qualification that I can take anywhere I like, I'm being mentored and all of a sudden there are 'meetings'. What are they, pray tell?

Climbing the greasy pole is a bit of a mixed blessing I think I'll find, the higher up you get, the less friends you can afford to have. I had a meeting with a gentleman quite high up in Estates recently and he asked me where I want to take my career, and I was quite honest when I said, 'I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was 15 and they sat me down to fill in a silly quiz which promised to tell me excatly what I should do when I grew up, and I don't really know now, but at the moment this feels right to me and we'll see where it takes me'. I'm still young, and if I find that this isn't for me then that's fine, there will be plenty of other opportunities.

In case you were wondering, that quiz told me I was best suited to being a Fish Farmer.

All work and no play makes Becki a dull girl

.....or does it?

I'm in the fortunate position of actually enjoying my job. Of course there are apsects of it that I'd rather not have to contend with, but what you have to do is just laugh at them. This morning we tied a load of lab chairs together, threw them onto a few wonky trolleys we have and proceeded to wheel them halfway across campus. After stopping for the hundredth time to pick up the aforementioned chairs when they've collapsed in slow motion before your very eyes....tempers become somewhat frayed. I usually just stop and tell myself that this is what I'm being payed for....and I'm not being paid badly. If they want to pay me to push around some stupid chairs then that's fine, rather that than stuck in front of an endless spreadsheet all day.

For amusement Bruce and I often demand that the person who has asked us to ferry all this stuff over to them comes and gives us a hand.......and the 3 stooges sketch begins.

Here are some pictures of the things Bruce and I get up to on a daily basis:

Bruce in a bin

Oh yes, this is Bruce, he's my manager, and yes, he's prancing around in a paper recycling bin. Funnier pictures would have been him getting in and out, it was all rather ungainly really, but I was laughing too hard to take any pictures. Bruce has decided that if we EVER have to move journals of Physiology, they're only going to one place...the recycling bin. This is one of our epic journies. The bin was full.....we weren't taking those bastard journals back upstairs....so Brucie leaps into action!!!

NEXT!!

Becki in.....er........?

How often does one get to dress up in a full oxygen tank and mask? I ask thee! I'm glad no one walked in whilst we were taking these pictures. We....randomly....have this oxygen equipment in a case in our room. I believe the story goes that a company was moving out and donated a load of equipment to our old department (Physiology) no one knew what to do with this....but thought it was really cool, so Bruce got lumbered with it. We decided to sell it on ebay for beer money (shhhhh) and so I was called upon, as the most glamorous person in a room of 2 (the other person being a 50-something year old guy) to model.

It never got in ebay, so this was essentially just my boss getting all excited about boys toys and dragging me into the drama. If anyone's interested, make an offer!! It'll be great in a chemical attack.

NEXTY!

Brucinda


Brucinda's arrival marked the beginning of a tradition that has carried on throughout the 3 years I've been in the office with Bruce and Linda before she moved out, I shall go into this tradition later.....I bet you're on the edge of your seats. Needless to say she started out life as a plain paperchase easter bunny. Now look at her.....just look. She's glorious. She sits at our window, looking out upon each years new student intake, waving at the contractors, and generally being a red-lightesque slaaaaag. I saw a picture on the UCL website a little while back, in our window you can see a little white smudge. The picture was in a very smart advertising spiel, I just hope that noone zooms in far enough to see Brucinda waving her boobies at the camera.

NEXT

I get to INVENT things!!

This is my bibbler! I run some student practicals at work, and the solutions we use have to be bubbled before use.....but how to bubble them all at the same time?? With Linda and Becki's Magik Bibbler!! That's how!! Look how it bibbles everything so nicely! With Linda and Becki's Magik Bibbler, all your bibbling worries are put to rest. Only $9.95, ($20.00 postage and packing).

NEXTY!!

I get to watch LOCUST PORN!!

Now I'll let you into a little secret about locusts, they can change SEX! Well, I know females can change into males.....but only when there are other males present it seems, they need the hormones. The reason I know this, the second year we got locusts we didn't specify all female, and when we emptied them into their cage we noticed a small colourful individual amongst them. We didn't think anymore of it until we returned the next day to find more small, colourful individuals, all joyously and enthusiatically mounting the females. In some cases there were little locust towers going on, as if females were mounting other females in a desperate attempt to escape the mini lotharios only to have him mount the whole heaving mass, plugging away delightedly as he went.

NEXTY!

Cheap and Nasty Tat!

This is one of my favourite pastimes at work. I could see how much Bruce loved Brucinda....I could see it in his eyes when he looked at her (point of fact.....she's still there). So...the next time I went away, I brought back a wonderful gift for Bruce and Linda, gifts that brought tears of joy (I think) to their eyes. In my picture here you can see that my colleagues have taken up the tradition with gusto! I am proudly displaying my sun magnet and macaw from Fuertaventura, my dodo keyring from Mauritius and my streetsign magnet from er....somewhere in Eastern Europe, all care of Bruce! The clog, pencil and shell are all sadly bought for me, by me. The rest of the crap is mainly stolen stuff!

Today, Bruce told me he was off to Spanish class, his homework had been to talk about a souvenir he brought back from his holidays. 'I didn't bring back a souvenir, all I brought back was a couple of pebbles' he says. I laugh.....until he produces 2 pictures of pebbles.

'Are you serious?'

'Yes!'

'You're going to talk about pebbles?'

'Yes, look! It's very interesting really' *scoots over to me on his chair and shows me his pebble pictures*

'Oh I see, are you going to talk about how this one is brown and this one is grey?'

*withering look*

'Or about how this one is small and this one is big?'

He actually did proceed to tell me an interesting story about the pebbles on the beach and then some cool pictures of a shipwreck! Then I suggested that he should talk about his tacky souvenir collection á la Becki!! Much funnier than the pebbles!

So, we proceeded looking up words like 'Leprechaun', 'kangaroo' and 'sheep' in Spanish, and I took these wonderful pictures of Bruce carefully wrapping up his treasures, for treasures they are indeed.

From left to right we have the following:

Starfish with a sticky-out tongue! I bought this from Cornwall

Clog from Amsterdam, came with a cheap pen of which we've all lost.

Leprechaun glitter globe from Dublin

Boxing light-up kangaroo pen from Australia, brought back by Linda

Fuzzy-top giraffe print pencil bought from Whipsnade animal park by yours truely!

Lamb clippy thing, from New Zealand, from Linda

Clay sheep from Wales, from ME!

And last, but not least, a Leaning Tower of Pisa magnet (complete with top hat) from...Pisa.

Yay for work!!! :D