A few things you need to know before you work in my buildings

I haven't blogged in a long time for many reasons.

The main ones being that 1- novelty wore off and somehow I don't have enough exciting stuff happening in my life to share it twice a day with you, 2- I'm super lazy, so I come up with blog ideas that never translate into actual blog entries, 3- It's grant's season in the lab and I'm mostly working around and against the clock.

Research at UQ is very controlled, and the finance department as well as the OH&S (the office for safety regulations) rule our world. Fortunately for us, the health and safety notices are made into cartoons and stickers, printed and pasted everywhere you look at (obviously they're not working for the office of being green and environment friendly). Here are a couple of things that make me smile while on campus: I thought I'd spread the joy!

First of all, if you cannot ride a normal bike, feel free to park your motorized tricycle anywhere in the bushes.
Then walk casually to your building, but with shoes on. It sounds trivial, but Aussies do like to walk barefoot. On campus, in the street, at the market place, and (I've heard) in certain offices of the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnologies (giggle, sorry guys, private joke)...
After you've complied and put shoes on, you can enter the elevator (provided you have a swipe card that grants you access to it). Buckle up and remember that this is a non-smoking ride.


After you've reached your floor and spent a couple of minutes or hours in the lab, you may find yourself in a dangerous situation. In case of serious spill that requires immediate washing, or if you're on fire (literally) keep calm, walk to the security shower, and seriously: JUMP FOR YOUR LIFE!
I may make it, but I'm not sure my undergrad student will...

There are plenty of complex diagrams all around the place to remind you at all time all kind of procedures. I'm clueless wether people actually read and understand them. One of my colleagues mentioned one day that they are very similar to another infamous diagram (Sorry James, but it SO true that I had to steal it):

And the last panel of the composite image speaks for itself: when going to the bathroom, if you don't know what to do, just read the notice... 

Last but not least: we gear up to enter in the animal facility, and breathing my own germs for 2 hours straight transformed my level-1 cold into a dramatic flu-like one (but it's the only way to protect the cute brown mice that work for us, so I'm glad for the masks. For real.)

Going to the moon with Gurveen!