Life of a Lab Rat

Today, the Lab is 'retreat'ing to Hyam's Beach in Jervis Bay, home of the whitest sands in the world (an interesting claim, that can not be corroborated online. Has anyone got a recent Guinness I could have a shufti at?). We've booked three houses for two nights, and have planned a barbecue, and that's about it.

I'm taking my fishing rods, tackle and hipflask, and me and the Younger Pawn and Dr Chou En are going to try to catch something to throw on the barbie. Failing that, Chou En and myself will sit on the rocks under the full moon and pretend we're fishing. The Black Queen is packing the steaks and sausages and home-brew ginger beer, and one of the students is taking about three thousand board games. It should be fun.

The balance of power shifted subtly last week. The Provost brought the SelectaHead™ process to a conclusion, and our institute now has a new Chair and deputy.

One of the choices was really no surprise, to me at least. But excitingly (steady on - Ed) the new deputy turned out to be the Fourth Man, the contender without nomination. You might recall that I expressed doubts about the input from the junior staff being taken seriously. I could have been wrong, which would be cool. The cynic in me proposes that the senior staff all said "yup, he's our man" and the Provost was forced to listen to them, so it all was an exercise in making us feel better anyway. Unfortunately I have no evidence either way at the moment.

That might change . . .

I mentioned that the junior staff in the Maze were to be consulted in the matter of the new Head. I went along to the third of the three meetings that the junior staff representative organized, and I suspect that she was getting a little tired of the affair by then. Oddly enough, most people in this time slot did not bother to show, so it was a reasonably cosy meeting.

We talked about the three self-nominated candidates (and I have to be careful here because one of them passed favourable comment on this weblog as he saw me swearing at the printer this morning, which revealed that (a) he reads this drivel and (b) I am, to one person in the Maze at least, fully nonymous) and their relative merits. As two of us in that meeting are still relatively new to the Maze it was a good opportunity to fill in some juicy background details. My lips, naturally, are sealed and I am very much afraid that you will have to wait for my memoirs before saying anything about that (if, on the other hand, you're authorized by a tabloid editor to offer me, say, half a million Euros I might reconsider).

The chair then asked if we could think of anyone other than the nominated candidates who might be suitable. Unanimously we agreed on one person, who it turned out was also the choice of the previous two meetings. Had this person nominated themself there can be little doubt he'd meet with major approval. The way this works, the Dean can ignore the nominated candidates and ask this Fourth Man if he'd consider doing it. So we shall see.

When it's a management failure.

They've spent the last two weeks replacing the doors to our refurbished offices. I must admit that they look like any other doors to me, and the new one nearest my desk creaks as much as the old one. But it still opens and closes, like doors are supposed to. Apparently the original new doors were too light, or too small, or the wrong kind of wood, or something. So we have improved new doors, which I guess is a good thing.

It turns out that the project was were badly managed and the firm responsible 'lacked local knowledge' (I don't know, I just eavesdrop in corridors) which is why we ended up with sub-standard doors — not that those of us who use them on a daily basis had actually noticed. Ultimately someone has had to pay for the reworking of the doors, whether it's the department (I sincerely hope not) or the firm that was so poorly managed in the first place.