Where science meets art on a cold misty morning.
Science: A deposit of needle-like ice crystals formed by direct condensation of water onto surfaces at temperatures below the freezing point.
Art:
Archives for December 2012
Kerstmis along South Bank
London has established a European-style Christmas Market along the south bank of the Thames. If you’ve been to it’s German cousins, it’s familiar and cute, ‘not too crowded yet attracting a younger crowd than Koln or Aachen. There are all of the usual suspects: craft huts and sausage vendors, gluhwein and Jager shots (at 5.50 gbp!). The carousel is colorful and the huge skillets of potatoes and onions are a nice variation on the theme. But no sign of ice skating or lebkuchen, and I miss the commemorative mugs and eierpunsch.
The evening’s most spectacular scenes were in the restaurant, though (Bistro Bruno Loubet),
and across the river, skyline and light against the churning skies.
Turner, Gormley, Constable
A warm winter Sunday ahead of a cod blast rushing in from the northeast; a perfect dry day to scurry in and see London at Christmas. There are lights around the man squares, a big tree in Trafalgar, holiday decorations in the store windows, colorful sweets at F&M. It was really a nice afternoon to wander and take it all in.
A few new exhibits have opened as well. The Royal Academy of Arts is 
featuring a retrospective of landscapes by Turner, Gainsborough, and Constable. through February. It begins with several galleries of etched prints from Italy and Holland that preceded, perhaps inspired, the later works. A final room is filled with several paintings by each of the three masters, characteristic but not iconic. The accompanying text brushed by interesting ideas (the relationship of Picturesque, Sublime, and Romantic landscape styles) without elaboration or illustration.
I’m a big fan of Turner (Color!) and Constable (Skies!), but it’s hard to see the point of this exhibition.
The accompanying (free) exhibit “Almost Real Art” was almost better… whimsical sculptures and witty placards that made me smile.
Then over to the White Cube to see the new Gormley exhibition. It features two main themes, one interesting, the other baffling.
The baffling one is Model, a gigantic sculpture of welded metal plates that (after signing a release) you enter and explore. It’s pitch dark, featureless, echoing, close, and (sorry) meaningless. The catalog says that it’s a metaphoric experience of the dark interior of the body, but it was hard to connect with.
Better were the cubic renderings of human bodies, 
with an 
accompanying room of studies. Although abstract, I thought they conveyed a lot of feeling (one in particular that seemed to show a body wearily resting, head against the wall, was appealing).
But it’s been that kind of week.
Where does time go?
I really laid into work this week, home most days and just digging through the most important things. A gratifying pile o things were accomplished, but at the end of each day I’d open my notebook and check things off the lists. Sadly, they didn’t seem to get much shorter.
I think there may be three things at fault.
1- Things always take longer than I think.
Less a matter of underestimating a task than of underestimating the complexity of a task.
Book US travel over Christmas. Straightforward: open the calendar, bring up the Delta / Orbitz websites, specify “My Travel is Flexible” and see what comes up. Choose ad pay.
But I have a UK visa meeting on the 19th at 8:45 in Croydon. The last flight to the US is at 2 pm, no way to be at Heathrow by noon if things get sticky. The earliest flight back on the 20th leaves via Amsterdam, so cut cost and risk and take the train over the night before.
Make a Eurostar booking, then the new Fyra train (only 20 gbp!) to Schiphol. Overnight hotel at Schiphol. Delta website breaks down: call Delta and sort through travel options and price alternatives. Call family to confirm itinerary. Call Delta to confirm and pay for itinerary. Print all travel documents (buy black print cartridge).
It’s complicated.
2- eMail and Phone calls are sticky.
When I send a message, I get a reply. That, in turn, must be answered, and leads to a conversation.
Arrange to start the clinical trial paperwork. I contacted the Joint Research Center for London’s Hospitals with my Physician / Investigator a month ago and established a file. Now we need to activate it and start filling it in.
The director writes that the process has been changed: there is now a new office across town. The new contact is copied in. My case officer offers a new clinical contact at a different site, copied in. My current physician bristles and asks for clarification. The Center asks for a protocol. I ask for a template. My CFO asks if the cost estimates are changing. The cc: list grows and grows.
In the end, we’re trying to identify who is key and try to get them all into a conference call, while asking everyone to limit replies, trim the cc’s, and stay on focus.
3- Stuff happens.
Sometimes an opportunity, sometimes a problem, but no 12-hour day actually ends up with twelve productive hours.
In the end, I think I have to be satisfied that I have done well the things that I can do, I’ve done the most important things, that I’ve finished the tasks I‘ve started, and that I’ve avoided too much stress or wasted motion.
Some day I’ll get back to the ABC’s: realizing Ambitions, keeping Balance, and nurturing Connections.
Views from the Windows
Morning in Maastricht and in Cambridge – snow / rain: Winter.
I furiously catching up with the business and administrative backlog, humming away in my garret and firing off calls 
and emails (and the occasional Andre Rieu eCard when I need a break: he’s like Martha Stewart on steroids).
I’m still getting Win8 set up in spare moments, and am trying to embrace the App Tiles and the Store as an alternative to the Desktop and Applications.
It’s not easy to love: ‘two main complaints.
First, the store is very poorly organized, making it difficult to find what I want. The main screen is a clutter of featured apps and a couple of unhelpful search options (New, Free). The detail is simply a listing of tiles in no particular order and with few filter or sorting options.
Second, the apps themselves are simple and immature, even the native ones from Microsoft. Take the Weather tile: there are no options for showing Celsius or multiple locations. Settings brings up a long list of disclaimers and legal paper, not actual settings: the Options consist of, well, one pointless one.
Better to ‘look out the real window, get work done on my ‘real’ Win7 laptop, and think of ‘real evenings’ with Andre.
<sigh> ‘just the gluhwein talking on that last one…
Advent Calendars
December is starting ugly, too many things to do, too little time to catch up fully. It turns into a twisty maze of tasks, interconnected on different levels, that remind me of the interiors at the Judge Business School (left).
The outcomes matter more than the process, for many of 2013’s decisions hang on the answers revealed each day of the next few weeks. In that way, life is coming to resemble an Advent Calendar. Each day, on only on that day, a door is opened and an answer I revealed. I may win a prize, I may get a lump of coal, but it’ become a matter of planning, waiting, responding.
The week began with Board Meeting and our company Christmas event. We had a good office-warming for the new digs at St. John’s and a nice dinner for the working team both in-house and from the Judge. Everyone is holding their 
breath to see what happens with the next round of laboratory experiments: with success we’re on to our clinical trial. An issue sets back the schedule a few months and impacts fundraising. We saved a bottle for when that door gets opened mid-month.
My visa hearing is coming up fast as well, bringing forward my Tier One for another year and indicating whether I may be granted Indefinite Leave in order to continue running the business. 5 years of success and good behavior are generally required across Europe, including the Netherlands and UK, but with anti-immigrant feelings running high,renewal is no longer a benign. That door opens on the 19th.
The cold weather finally gave way to snow this morning, a light dusting across the fields and roads. I’m curled into my home office, catching up after a lot of travel and meetings, so it’s a good excuse not to slide into the office. The floor is covered with a white dusting of paper, blowing into drifts against walls and furniture.
And the computer is winking with an invitation from Andre Rieu to enter his Advent Calendar for 2012. CD, Tickets, recipes and concert videos lurk behind the links, set in his Maastricht home.
I’m fascinated by the lush look and sounds of it all. His mansion lies just outside of town along a walking trail and I’ve seen the exterior many times. I can’t imagine anyone really decorating to this level, but I’ll probably walk by to see. I’ll arrive back in the US around the 20th, so it’s going to be a scramble to put up Christmas together in the days remaining.
That door opens on the 24th.