Two weddings and a Poplet

This summer is full of weddings... everyone told me this would happen at some point, so now I'm officially in "that stage" where one by one my friends and family get hitched. It's a lot of time and money and travel, but also absolutely lovely to share in all the bubbling happiness.

First up this year was the wedding of Dave's brother. Peter and Mari have been together since the equivalent of high school, have spent many years of university apart while Peter was in Oxford and Mari in Cardiff (sound familiar?), and everyone was thrilled to see them make it official. The wedding was held in a register office and then guests walked to a nearby italian restaurant. It was smaller than other weddings I've been to, and everything was personal and laid back.

Not sure what Peter was saying here, but I love this photo.

Dave and I did have some jobs to do during the day... in addition to Dave being one of the witnesses, we were both drafted in for a slightly unusual musical ensemble. For the recessional, Dave, me, the bride's sister, and a friend of the couple played an arrangement of the Queen of Sheba written for four oboes. Odd? Certainly. But it was fun and made everyone smile (even the four of us). It's not too often that four oboes can get that reaction :)

Oboe quartet. And no, I never look attractive while playing the oboe.

More photos from the day can be seen here.


We also were invited to a wedding of two musical friends of ours that have played for years and years in the Oxford Millennium Orchestra (OMO, the one Dave conducts and that tours in Europe every summer). Natalie and Alex had a lucky burst of sunlight as they were married in a charming English village church near where they grew up, a little drive outside of Oxford.

During the space between the ceremony and evening reception, four of us drove our hired car to a nearby village where we had a few pints and an excellent meal at a gastropub. We rejoined the wedding party as the ceilidh band was starting up. If you don't know what a ceilidh (pronounced cay-lee) is, think of it as celtic/gaelic square dancing or line dancing. A caller takes you through the steps, like 'strip the willow' and the slightly dangerous spinning 'basket,' and the general feeling is of giddy dizziness. The effect was, I admit, amplified by the free-flowing wine :)

After a quick night's sleep, Dave and I headed out again, taking our trusty hire car to visit our friends now a few hours drive away. Laura and Tim Popkin were hitched sometime last year, and quickly started getting down to business by buying a house and having a baby. We were overdue to see both house and baby, and we found the most perfect day to visit.

James (still known as Poplet, which is what we called him long before he had a proper name) was adorable and quite patient with the two interlopers. Dave and I didn't mess things up too badly. Laura and Tim were delightful hosts, providing a BBQ feast in the blazing sunshine. It gets harder and harder to keep in contact with friends as they do the marriage/house/baby thing, but it is definitely worth it.

For more pictures from Nat&Alex's wedding and our visit to the Popkins, the full album can be seen here.

Report from a traveling scientist

Phew, I haven't spent much time in my own apartment lately. The great summer scientific conference season is upon me. I don't want to sound like I'm complaining; I mean, I am getting paid to be an international scientist of mystery. It certainly does NOT suck. However, in my impending middle agedness, I am sublimely happy to be back in my own bed this week. Also, this brief respite gives me a chance to fill you in and upload a bunch of photos from my travels. Enjoy!


First up: Annual Meeting of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) in Milan, Italy.

This is my big event for the year. Our world revolves around the ISMRM schedule: we cram to finish all of our new research to submit for the deadline in November, and then cram all of the actual analysis into early spring to get results to present at the big event. Get a poster accepted, and you can probably find money to attend the meeting. Get a talk, and you are a golden rock star for the year. This year I had one of each, and was feeling rather pleased with myself.

I enjoyed every ray of sunshine that Italy could offer.

Approximately 7.5k people attend, including scientists, clinicians, and representatives from industry (Siemens, GE, etc). The conference venue was massive and awkwardly laid out, and there were many parallel streams of talks and workshops so it constantly felt stressful and challenging to get to all the things I wanted to. Hard core physics development and the latest translational patient work are inevitably overlapping. Still, my work garnered a lot of interest (for example, I was scheduled to stand in front of my poster for one hour, and ended up there for almost 3 hours talking to interested parties).

A sample of the several thousand posters being presented

The conference is also a social whirlwind. Every night is an event, and I didn't buy dinner once. An opening reception got things going the first night. Then GE wined and dined select people, wooing us with a rather adorably corporate inspirational speech from the ex 'evangelist' of Apple. Tuesday was an event for Women in MRI held in the castle, where we nibbled on canapes, drank prosecco, and were all rather surprised to recognize how nice it can be when there are no blokes around. Wednesday was a celebration of 30 years in MRI, with the biggest names from the last 30 years of literature being announced (interestingly, following Tuesday's event, all awardees were male with male co-authors. sigh). Thursday was a closing ceremony with live music. What you are missing, however, is that after every one of these events we then Went Out to the pub. Nothing like surprising a local Milanese pub with 200+ scientists drinking into the wee hours of the morning on the sidewalk until the neighbors call police... These events are where the real networking happens, and I am enjoying feeling like part of a big community. Every year I know more people and more people know me. And every canape and every pint helps.

Scientists networking. (Before heading to the pub.)

Now, the best bit of ISMRM being in Milan is that my very bestest of best friends from MIT lives there, and I stayed with her for an extra two days after the conference finished up. We figured out that we hadn't seen eachother in 4-5 years. SHAMEFUL. I admit that I was a bit nervous about how the reunion would go: would we even like eachother any more? And it was a wonderful weekend. Absolutely lovely. We had dinner at her mom's apartment, then spent Saturday shopping in the local market and spending a whopping 60 euros on the most amazing meats, breads, cheeses and fresh produce. Next, we spent the rest of the weekend eating it all with gluttonous pleasure. Despite the weather, we stayed indoors on Sunday and watched period dramas like the good ole days, before heading to La Scala for a premier of Strauss' Elektra (a very neat night out, but a rather shouty opera). How could we let so many years go by? SHAMEFUL. Already working on our next visit.

For more photos, you can scroll through the album.

Next up: Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping in Hamburg, Germany.

This conference has a lot of overlap with ISMRM, but definitely has a different culture. Replace all the clinicians and corporate reps with psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists... besides making it much less likely to observe anyone wearing a suit, it also makes the atmosphere more informal and friendly. The smaller scale (more like 2-3 thousand people) and having most of the day be 'single track' (as opposed to parallel sessions) fostered a feeling of community and collaboration.

I had minimal stress at this conference, as I was presenting the two projects I also presented at ISMRM. So instead, I met people. I introduced myself over email, met over coffee, jotted down contact info at posters... dozens of new connections were made and many tenuous acquaintances are now firmly established in the 'friends' column. It was all definitely good for my career, and it lit a bit of a fire under my ass to get things published as I sensed other people would be highly interested and potentially swoop in on these topics if I left it too long.

New friends from San Diego

 The German food was a bit heavy over the course of the week, and we all drank too much lager. Kevin ("boss"), Jess (a grad student) and I all woke up at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning before the conference to go to the famous Hamburg Fischmarkt on the waterfront... some people had been to bed, others hadn't, and at 8am as many people were having coffee as having a pint (we opted for the later, just to fully appreciate the experience :) We also visited the world's largest model train exhibit, which sounds nerdy, and is then beyond cool (although yes, definitely still nerdy).

8am on a workday. Not bad.

I dusted off my meager German, and the city grew on me over the week. The sunshine and scientific success didn't hurt, either.

For more photos, you can scroll through the album.

Sometimes I really love my job :)