Saturday, March 21, 2009

I'm Writing My Brother A Letter

Edit: DON'T BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.
BELIEVE IN ME WHO BELIEVES IN YOU.




Music comes first this post because these words go with sound.
For lack of proper subject matter, I've just been writing till I run out of things to say.

Anyone who claims to either read or write while using public transportation has obviously never ridden the Maui Bus.
This will not be a diatribe railing against public transportation - The majority of my experiences on buses have been pleasantly neutral. Even my short 2-hour forays up to Bellingham via greyhound bus were never anything more than tedious.
In fact, I actually like taking the bus twice daily. It is a step up from being driven (which is nice, should I require feeling independent), and yet it requires zero effort on my part. I count on the half hour down the hill to provide spare time for rest or homework, both of which I get in small quantities. I am more ambivalent about the return trip. The bus system is new and still working out kinks - The only route from downtown to Hali'imaile passes first through Pukalani and Makawao. It is twice as long a ride up as down, and I'm usually tired and bored.

I am somewhat disappointed that I have yet to experience true public transportation horror stories. Not once have I been struck in the ribs by a chinese grandmother. A hobo has never accosted any of my five physical senses. No drunken brawls, or even drunken passengers.
The buses are all relatively pristine, new as they are.
The seats are padded, with seat belts. The air conditioning functions. Not one thing smells of urine.
I'm only complaining a little - I'm more reliant on this boring system than I'd like to admit.
It's a dollar each way, which means either I've spent.....over 200 dollars on travel in half a year, or my cribbed math is incorrect. I'm not sure which one would bother me more. 200 dollars is a lot of money, right?
My original point was to just show that the bus is an important factor in my day to day drudgery - the overall topic of this correspondence.
I catch the bus at the tennis courts at 9:52, which means I leave the house at 9:45, which means I get up at 9:05, which means I set my alarm for 8:55.
I haven't missed the bus yet, for a number of reasons. One, if you miss the bus, you have to wait for an hour and a half until it comes around again. Two, this is Maui, so the bus will probably wait for you. Depending on the driver, you also get a grace period of a few minutes as he (and half the passengers) stand around on "smoke break".

One thing that does bother me is that people will blatantly and casually sit on the aisle-side seat when nobody is next to them - or they'll sit window-side, and put their backpack next to them. This typically isn't a problem, but it's happened often enough that it's starting to get to me. Are these people so averse to having another person sit down next to them for half an hour that they'd rather force them to stand? Are a few inches of leg room worth that black karma mark of douchebaggery?
It isn't a big deal, of course, but that just makes it worse. Too small a transgression to warrant a remark on the lines of "Hey. Bro. You're a cock.", too widespread a problem to ignore. Luckily it doesn't happen too often.
There are typically few enough passengers that I can claim a window seat all to myself - the better to stare blankly at scenery from while listening to music, which is what I do. My iPod has seen me through some (Maui-relative) agonizingly slow traffic due to the highway being forever under construction.
I use "shuffle" now because I am trying to break my habit of downloading a record, listening to it to the point of exhaustion, then tiring of it for the next six months. However, because that has been my habit for the past six months, for each song I feel like listening to at any particular moment there are a half dozen songs I don't particularly want to hear, so my hand is constantly poised to skip to the next track. The end result is that I go through several hundred songs a day having listened fully to roughly a fourth of them.


I've continually attempted to write these letters during my lunch breaks. MCC - while possessing a fine culinary arts program - only offers a 3 hour window of cafeteria time, during which I'm at work. So I take my lunches at the food court at the mall.
It's done me well so far (for the past, oh, six months). I cycle through my options: Panda Express, Maui Tacos, and a Fish and Chips shop are my regulars. There is also a McDonalds, should I feel particularly daring, and a Quiznos, if I want a large hunk of bread. Recently I've included the korean barbecue and japanese something-something kiosks at the end of each row. For the longest time I was put off by the fear of pickled vegetables and tripe, but it turns out they do a decent chicken katsu.
Today I got a fish and chips plate, the sole reason of which being that I had Panda Express yesterday. I never eat at the same place twice in a row, oh heavens no, I just couldn't live with the shame.


My job is incredible. I couldn’t have landed in a better situation if I had tried – which I didn’t, which makes it all the more amazing. I probably have some official title, like Senior Lab Technician, but it has little bearing on what I actually do. I’m loath to even call it a job, because I only work about two to four hours a day and sometimes they have to remind me I get paid, like, real money dollars.
I do whatever needs doing in whatever lab they tell me to. Any short description of my job would end up omitting a lot. I’ve done something different every week since I started. The amount I’ve learned is ridiculous, unfair, preposterous. It’s better than taking the class – which I have yet to do, Microbio or Chem. I’m getting paid to play around in a lab. My bosses are the entire science department at MCC – it takes a specific kind of person to get a doctorate in chemistry, then move to Maui and teach.
One is an interpretive-swirly-artist/djembe-drumming hippy (who also has a PhD in organic chemistry), one is a 60+ year old crotchety biochemist who smokes, golfs, drinks, and teaches courses in that order. He refers to the Bush administration as “fuckers who’d gnaw on your head for a dollar” and shouts at me to get his algae medium prepared correctly. There are others; it’s an incredible cast, and I just come in daily and soak in it all.
I have no idea how I’ll describe this position to my next prospective employer. What do I do, indeed.
Sometimes I wash a giant pile of glassware. Sometimes I make copies of lab sheets. Well, I used to. We make the new guy do that now, mostly. I’ve actually gotten somewhat competent and useful around the place, so I get the fun jobs. Jobs that can best be described in a single sentence. For example:
Did you know that concentrated sulfuric acid releases, just ‘cause, a mist that will just fucking kill you if you breath it?
Did you know that silver nitrate will stain your skin purple? Did you know you can order buckets of pig uterii and 195 proof ethanol in the same shipment?
My job is awesome. I read through, set up, and test run every chem lab. I prepare all the growth and test mediums for all the micro experiments. I set things on fire and write down what happens. I grow E. Coli, because the book tells me to. In fact, I’ve dealt with it so much it’s become uninteresting. E. Coli is for kids. I deal with Proteus vulgaris! Enterobacter aerogenes! Rhizopus stolonifer (Okay, that one is just black bread mold). And the beautiful thing is, I only know half of what I’m doing. The other time, I’m just a tool. The instructions flow from the book and notes, and I do the fun mindless stuff like preparing a hundred sabourad plates or 50 peptone-iron-deep tubes. Then the students have their way with them, and hand them back to me, and I get to do the fun mindless stuff like autoclaving and washing and doing it again next week.
I don’t even wear a lab coat. Oh, I could if I wanted, and I follow aseptic procedure and work in a sterile environment.
But I do get paid to set things on fire. I don't need a coat to be awesome.
My job is fantastic.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How did you get that job again? I hate you.

March 21, 2009 at 2:52 PM
Em said...

YES, HOW DID YOU GET THAT JOB AGAIN?





(it was me)

March 22, 2009 at 4:17 AM

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