Fri, October 16, 2009 10:07:17 AM
From: Linda Whittaker
Hi everyone,
This week has been like a blur. I am racing a deadline on a multi-million EU proposal with Sicily and some other countries, while doing final preparations for an international workshop I'm hosting here in Israel at the end of this month. Long days and andrenaline pounding, but so far, so good.
The EU proposal is an important one, and would mean about 250,000 euro as our share of the work (about 3 million euro all told). Our share is about 300,000 US dollars or more than a million shekels, the biggest grant I ever landed. This is to set up a marine protected area monitoring system for the Mediterranean Sea. The EU asked me to do the data network development, which is the heart of this project. Took a very deep breath, and said okay. Then went running for my informatics expert. We sat in Beersheva yesterday in the mensa, cooking how we would do it. Toto, this ain't ACCESS any more.....Deadline for submission is 30 October. My international workshop is 27-19 October. Nervous breakdown scheduled for 31 October.
Likewise the conference. We've got about 60 people registered and eight partners from Europe flying in. I've got some secretarial support but am still handling everything from the agenda to the lunch menu. Haven't even prepared my own lecture yet; will have to do it next week. We're at the halfway point in our current European project and it's time to plot strategy for how we are going to wind this up. It didn't help that the head of the national biodiversity center got fired a few weeks ago; biodiversity is critical to this project and was limping anyway. Nobody wants to bite the bullet so it looks like I'll have to do it......
At least we are past the holidays and things are functioning normally again. Emails flying, and I'm wearing a groove in the corridors going from accounting to my boss to my lab to my office. But at least the office is open. This stuff is important enough that I've got my own boss working for me on it now.......he sure puts up with a lot. But I am taking him to Greece with me next month for the project's annual meeting so he can't complain too much.
Can't tell you much else because even the evening news is going in one ear and out the other. Iran, the Pacific, the dollar went down against the shekel again, etc. Unless a war breaks out, I'm focused on work until the middle of November, and after that we overhaul the existing data system at work so I'll probably submerge on that as well. Yeah, it's nice to be busy, but my house looks like a bomb went off here.
It's beautiful weather, though. Past the summer, and still warm enough to sit outside. Some days are clear and cool, but we got "hamsin" weather today (dust storms from Saudi Arabia) and the temperature soared. Skies are yellow with the dust. My cats are sneezing. Usually we get 2-3 days of this and in autumn it ends with rain, very dirty rain. I've read that half the soil in Israel is from this dust deposition, the only thing the Arabs ever gave us for free. It's good soil too; that's why farmers have been able to till the fields here for 10,000 continuous years without exhausting it. We still keep getting incoming dirt, so we shouldn't complain.
That's about all. Nothing to report on me. Seems like I'm very healthy when I'm flying with afterburners going like this. Or just too busy to notice aches and pains. When I've nothing to do, suddenly I feel old and sick, but today I'm ten years younger. Better keep my ass in gear as long as possible, it seems.
shabbat shalom,
Linda
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