Bonding

ほとんど終わりました。Finally, after possibly the craziest two weeks I’ve had out here my experiments are almost over. For a month at least. Not sure quite how I’ll be feeling afterwards. Probably a little down I’m sure, the release of all that stress and lack of sleep are enough to knock anyone for six.

This post is about bonds. Now I could yammer on about chemical bonds, atomic bonds and all those other weak forces that physically bring life together. My favorite (yes I do have one) is of course the hydrogen bond. It’s the thing that gives water all of it’s fantastically bizarre properties and possibly the most important bond to life on this planet. However I’m not talking about those kind of bonds today but instead interpersonal bonds.

 

I’d actually written up a different post, a very negative one focused on a particular aspect of working in Japan that I can’t stand. Maybe I’ll put it up another time because I’ve just had an epiphany. In these final few hours of beamtime I realized just how happy I am to be part of this amazing team.

Now if you’ve been following this blog for a bit you’ll have come to realize that research is hard and this is, in my opinion, even more so at a synchrotron. Our experiments have a limited time frame, if they go wrong there is a potential that we can’t repeat them. It can take months of planning for a few hours of real measurements and so on.

Working at a synchrotron really does put some serious demands on you I feel. It requires intelligence, creativity and above all grit. I think this can be said of my whole team considering we are all huddled around a computer screen at 3am even after 4 days of little sleep. Fingers crossed for a hit.

I never thought I could work like this, never though I’d want to but I’m still here and I love it. The biggest part of that is my team. Battling adversity always brings people together, probably why I’m so close to my friends back home whom I’ve spent many years chasing plastic with.

It’s definitely been difficult here the past few months. We are quite literally doing something that has never been done before. There have been more teething errors and faults than I can count on both hands and feet but somehow we’ve kept going and I really do feel part of something rather than an observer now.

 Chatting dodgy Japanese with Shimada-san, I still switch between polite and slangy by accident, which always amuses him. Talking about life from east to west with Sunam and Daewonog. Just being inspired by Dr. Song’s passion and dedication to his research. The experiences I’m having here with SIRU really are life changing.

Bonds are important and I think often we don’t fight enough to keep them. It’s easy to let a friendship, a tie to someone slide away. We get busy, sure, we get annoyed and act rashly. But these bonds make us.

 

In fact it is this ability, to make none family or reproductive bonds, to form friendships that really sets humans aside. So this is my tribute to bonding. Some can be weak like those holding molecules close together, called wan der vaals for the record. Others are as strong as covalent bonds, how atoms connect to other atoms. All of them however are precious.

A bit gushy I apologize, I’m likely a bit sleep delirious right now but just have a think about the bonds in your life. How close are any of them to breaking? And what can you do to stop that happening?

Ja mata kondo ne.