Research Trip

My time in North Dartmouth, MA has been quite busy. Long before arriving, I found it difficult to find accomodation. Not knowing the area, I had no idea how close/far motels really were. I tried to just rent a room in a house somewhere near campus, but that was a tedious process, probably moreso given it is mid-semester here. One owner had her spam filter set to "I don't want any email at all." Dumb idea if you are trying to make money renting your house and don't want to list a phone number. Another owner tried to cram me into a 4-bedroom house (with 1 bathroom!) that was already occupied by four tenants. Fortunately, her tenants had more sense than she did and said 'no way'. Then she said she said she had a friend, blah blah, but then never followed through. I gave up and booked a cheap motel I knew to be within a mile or so of the university. Then a week later I get email responses from a few other people. Guess once the economy really started faltering they realized they should get serious if they want to make money. Or something like that. (Tip to owners renting out houses in North Dartmouth: this business is not easy money. If you want customers, make yourself available and check your email daily until you have tenants.)

I only stayed a week at the cheap motel. It was filthy. I got a bargain rate of $42 a night, but the normal rate is $57 a night. Either rate is too much to pay for a room that hasn't been dusted in years, where some of the lamps don't work, and some rooms reportedly have problems with bedbugs. I was lucky not to have a room with bedbugs, but the dirt, poor lighting, and overall disrepair just got to me after a few days. I switched to a better motel a short ways down the road. It was double the rate, but compared to the first place, my new room was like a palace and spotlessly clean.

Soon after I arrived, I cleared up confusion about the "Dartmouth" name of the university. Dartmouth College in NH is the Ivy League school. This university is the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. It's not terrible, but it's definitely not Ivy League. You can just tell by looking around the place. This university is fairly small. Don't get me wrong -- I still believe a university experience is mostly what a student makes of it. The people in the research group remind me somewhat of the group back at UoW. I'm glad the people are great, because the lab definitely isn't. All of the mixing equipment is plastic -- which is not good, because residues from previous uses can be left behind and contaminate the next guy's work. Glass is best, and I finally found someone in the chemistry department who gave me some. Same for filtered and deionized water (ions and dissolved matter in water can also mess up chemical mixtures).

The town itself is also quite small. The center of everything is the local mall, and the primary pasttimes appear to be shopping, eating, and driving around -- major components of the lifestyle I left behind. Sure, I've done quite a bit of shopping here, as has Michelle in Dallas -- but we've exercised great discretion and purchased things to go with our new, more balanced lifestyle. Overall, this place is pretty boring, particularly without a car to go to some of the more interesting spots, which are all 10 miles or more away. Thankfully, I've got a good internet connection, books, and cable television to keep me busy when I'm not doing research or writing reports.

In between the settling in and shopping, I've managed to get quite a bit of work done. The printer systems here will likely make great additions to our lab, should we acquire one or more. Either way, I've learned enough to make this trip worthwhile. I am looking forward to going back to Oz, though. I find myself really missing the place.