Change? What change?

This is my welcome-back post after several months of silence. I wished to tackle my blog block since last summer, so here I am again, writing about my adventure as a postdoc in Japan.

I have started this blogg when I fist came to Japan at the end of 2009. One year of unhappiness later I moved on, and everything was supposed to change. Unfriendly workplace was supposed to change into a friendly workplace, unsupportive postdoctoral supervisor was supposed to change into a supportive one, unhappiness was supposed to change into happiness.

Before moving I used to put all my writing out there for you to read, but after coming to Tokyo I could not write at all for a year. I could not write, because the expected change did not materialised. I was so disappointed. I was unable to think about it, let alone write about it. Since the start of 2011 I started writing a lot privately, so I am no longer blocked. Time has come to share it with the world again.

A year and a half later I am asking: where is my change? New place, new people, new environment... why still the same issues? Is this my fault or is it this country with its inherent inflexible rules of interpersonal relating at work that is to blame? Or more specifically is this Japanese male dominated academia and me fitting in like a round peg into a square hole?

After I changed my work surrounding into a one which was apparently friendlier, why has nothing changed? Why the same problems in not fitting in and lack of acceptance and communication?

I have worked for a year in the new place waiting for the change to happen, to kick in, to arrive. Nothing. I have started looking inside. Is this my attitude? What if I start learning the language and the specific tricks and tips for Japanese workplace interactions? Still no change.

While I was waiting for the change to become apparent I was unable to write anything for my blog. Was I wrong with my expectations to stop being unhappy? What if I change my attitude into acceptance of where I am and who I work with? Will the situation change then? But what if my fitting in the Japanese environment is not only dependent on my own attitudes, but also on the attitudes of people around me? Their attitudes that I cannot change, however hard I try...

For the last half a year I did a lot of intensive work on myself and on my attitudes and thinking. I am changing a lot on the inside. But on the outside I am stuck. When will the change come?

Summer 2010 Snapshot: Bitter-Sweet

This post is my contribution to August 2010 Scientiae Carnival. This my time capsule for Summer 2010, a place where I am having a look at the past year and taking a snapshot of the present moment. It is also a part of my “Best Year Yet” exercise in reflection and goal-setting. This post will focus on what has been and what has happened and my plans and goals for future will come in a separate post.

For the last three years I did my “Best Year Yet” exercise in spring, usually between February and April, so this year I am one season late with it. It’s because I was afraid to look back on my life for the last half a year. I blinded myself to past and future and only lived in the present. The past was to painful to reflect upon, and the future too scary to face. I lived in avoidance of reflection and goal settings and decided to take this Carnival as an opportunity to finally face my demons.

In October 2008 I took a year long postdoctoral contract in Japan, and soon I was very disillusioned with living and working in this country... My May 2009 Scientiae post was titled “I am going to quit any minute now”. Here's a snapshot:

“I am at the stage of my career where I need to continue postdoctoral research to build up publications portfolio.”
“All of this [..] made me into quite an unhappy postdoc.”
“Since about January I was so unhappy in this workplace that I wished to quit next month and I was investigating options that would allow me to do just that. I now live month-to-month thinking that my misery will end very soon.”
“My mindset could be summarised in one simple sentence: ‘I want to get out from here! How do I do that?’”
“While my job continues to be a nightmare for me, in my private life all is well. I am very happy with my husband and I appreciate that he came here with me. I have made wonderful new friends”
“Where I am now in my life I see some hope.”
“For about two years now I live with constant uncertainty about my future. I do not know where I will live and work in two months time, let alone trying to figure out where I will be in five years…”

Last year has been a whirlwind time. I have moved to a new job, and now I am in a great group with a great boss and many opportunities. Yet I am still only half-happy, I continue to be semi-disappointed and lacking on energy or enthusiasm for my work… It is as if the failure of the last year and the resulting depression cast a shadow that I am dragging behind me, even though I am pretending I do not see it and that I long lost it. I am just afraid to turn back and see that it is still behind me.


Am I where I thought I would be over a year ago?

I am physically and rationally. But not emotionally. I am not as “sorted” as I wish I would have been, and the great personal sacrifice I am making (living half-a-world apart from my husband) is tougher to ignore than I originally though it would be.


Can I remember my goals for the 2009-2010? How far have I come since then? What have I accomplished in that time?

I quit the job - but four months later than I wanted… and with a big bang and in negative atmosphere…

I started a new job - but I am still disappointed with the way things are in Japan… and I cannot even complain, because this place is so much better for me, yet in many terms still as isolating at work as the old place used to be… This is partly why I was blocked to blog, since I felt I should not be complaining about the new better place, and that I should learn to appreciate it more. Therefore I just went into denial and pretended problems did not exist. And some of them are eventually sorting themselves out with time.

I have moved five times thanks to my ex-boss messing with my head and me not giving-in, which now left me in the constant fear of changes that may come unexpectedly, and left me scarred, unable to unpack, and living with most of my things still in boxes for about eight months since my relocation (lack of space and time for unpacking notwithstanding).

I have submitted a fellowship proposal - but it had not been accepted.

I have tried to help my sister’s problematic relationship, and I gained her (now ex) boyfriends friendship. As a consequence I have lost my sister’s friendship and she now does not talk to me at all.

I have finally started regular study of Japanese language, for which I had no opportunity in my previous location, and what had contributed heavily to my isolation.

I have bought and read many excellent books.

I have made some new friends in Tokyo.

I have bought a guitar, which I yet have to start playing. No time! Where is it all going???


What is going on in my life right now?

I am going to go to a big conference overseas in two weeks time. It is the highlight of the year for me, and I have been stressed about it since April. My research results are still half-baked, in progress and I feel not ready for the presentation, yet I have to do it. I have to move forward and go there are show the world what I am doing.

I am planning another post that will deal with my goals and future plans, but not sure if I manage to do it before the conference. Please stay tuned!

Discontinuous Life

In year 2000, when I graduated after five years degree (joint Bachelors and Masters) I imagined that my times of stress and being poor are over.

I was ready to enter the workplace. Actually, through the five years of university I imagined that studying is my work, and treated getting good grades as “projects” to complete, resulting in “pay”: the amount of next year’s academic achievement scholarship was based on the grades. So I worked for it as for my salary.

After five years of such training I thought that I now deserved to rip off the benefits of this hard work and get a good, and what’s more important, a well-paid job.

But my mind was poisoned by the academic achievement. As I was one of the best students in the very good and progressive department, which was state-of-the-art research wise, it was assumed of me that I would continue my path into academia. I had a project for a PhD already aligned in my home country university, but at the last moment I applied and got funding to do a PhD in UK.

This was a first life discontinuity that I have experienced.

Oh, I will be paid so well, I though. Unfortunately I did not take into account the differences in cost of living between my home country and the UK, and the “well-paid” turned out to be an illusion.

Also, I had to say on the student status during my graduate school years, something that was different to what I had expected.

The system as it was in my home country, was that PhD students get an employee status, where the social insurance is paid and this period counted to the retirement years as a job, not as “study time”.

I feel screwed now, almost “cheated by the system”. All of these years for nothing. And I have not even started my retirement payments yet. In mid-thirties and so far I have no retirement fund. Ok, I should not be exaggerating here, I do have some. I did start my retirement payments four months ago. But as I will most likely not retire in Japan, this is kind of worthless anyway.

By choosing to follow an academic path in 2000 I thought I am choosing a good career, but it turned out that the possibility of a career in academia was an illusion too. The system I had expected was not there, and instead I have found myself as part of this highly competitive, win-or-out tournament-style system.

Forgive me if it all hints to bitterness about academia on my part, it is not very motivational, I know. This probably stems from my disappointment with the real world as compared to what I had imagined it to be and to what it probably was a few decades ago (and still is in some countries, but who know for how long is stays this way, as there are moves everywhere to a “better, more competitive” American model of academic research).

Let’s now move on the second big discontinuity of my life so far.

My second move abroad, coming to Japan was a move away from a comfortable life. I had figured out all the processes necessary for smooth life in the UK and I could have spent the rest of my life there. I was accepted as a resident, and if I stayed half a year more I would apply for citizenship. But I have thrown it all away, for something new. I did not even know what I was looking for by coming to Japan. I guess I got seduced by Japanese government advertising of their fellowship schemes, after I attended one or two presentations meant to attract more people from UK to research visits in Japan.

This advertising of Japanese culture had very much presented a very selective side of Japan, very much like British Council presents very one-sided views of Great Britain to its abroad audiences (for example I had no idea about some rather not admirable facts about Britain before I came to live there, such as for example the amount of alcohol that Brits pour down their throats each weekend was a shocking revelation to me).

In coming to Japan I was not mainly looking for adventure, I followed an opportunity to earn money and continue my life as an academic scientist. Or, more specifically, I came to make use of an opportunity to move to a new scientific discipline, which I dreamed up for myself.

I guess the failure of the last year's postdoc helped me to accept the defeat and that I will never be able to become an academic, which was probably my initial dream. Or maybe it was not a dream, it was a certainty. I guess I should just shut the f*** up and stop moaning about it, as was recently recommended by commenters in bloggy discussions about the sweetness of difficulties and challenges of postdoctoral experiences.

There is some excellent advice for us postdoctoral researchers, such us “pull your head out of your ass or remove the blinkers” and “get the hell off home plate” (as tideliar suggests) or “Sack the fuck up*, [..] or get out” as the next anonymous commenter suggests.

Sorry, I got a little side-tracked by my moaning. What was I talking about again?

I have now moved to yet another country, this time on a different continent (as if the previous move within Europe was not challenging enough). It has been a huge transition. One of the reasons I wanted to do it, was to prove to myself that I can still do it, and I am not too old or “too stiff in my ways” for such a transition. To prove to myself that I can adapt to anything.

Coming from a country with the history of WW2 concentration camps, at school we read a lot of literature about human suffering and adaptation to such hard conditions, and I was generally made to believe that it is not impossible to adapt to new, challenging, demanding and difficult environments. I thought if people were able to adapt to live in concentration camps than I should be able to adapt to life in Japan.

Yet the last year I consider to be my failure to adapt.

At the moment I am trying to accept that I already am one of the 80% of postdocs that do not find the faculty position at the end of their postdoctoral “training” and that I will have to re-qualify for some new job, where, in my forties, I will be competing with 21 or 23 year-olds (depending on the country). I guess I will then just sack up and accept it, won't it? With a little bit of moaning, of course!

Now as I still have a few years of research and fun to go, I have time to ponder what my life’s plan B will be and how to exit academia gratefully, without the feeling of being kicked-out and got-rid-of. And to find my niche in the real world.

I generally do not believe that human life is continuous. I believe that there are certain events that force people to move on, and to change their outlook. Our grandparents and parents die, children are born, jobs are changed, we age, our friends move away, we move away, we loose close ones due to break-ups and deaths, all of those events change us. With each change we become a slightly different person, and we continually evolve. Life, as I see it, is a dynamic process, and it is highly discontinuous.

*to sack up (I had to find the meaning on the urban dictionary for that one) is to “stop being such a pussy”, or “the figurative act of growing a scrotum and pull of a crazy stunt or to face some sort of tough task”, i.e. be a man. Now I know, if only had I been born a man!

scientiae-carnival

To Do or not To Do

It has already been four months since I started my new postdoc in Tokyo. I have been little a bit of blog-blocked, suffering from a blogger’s type of writer’s block, so as usual I can only apologize for being silent for so many weeks.

Those last months were clearly defined by my difficult relationship with the To Do list.

Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of “To Do” lists. Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, work, home, shopping, what not…

Before moving to this new job, I treated my “November To Do” list as a parking place for all ideas that I had and all private and work projects that I did not want to start until my head was clear and until I moved to Tokyo. I had kept this list since May or June of the previous year, when I decided I “cannot take it any more” and that I was moving out and leaving my postdoc in the rural university in western Japan.

So I have started “saving” and writing down tasks To Do “after I move to Tokyo” and I have accumulated quite a long list of tasks even before moving. Many of the tasks were my wishful thinking about how my life would be better here and how much more free I would be to pursue whatever it wanted.

In Autumn all sort of mundane, mind-bogging bureaucratic projects were added to the list. Apply for the visa (not such a simple project, with many papers to get), sort out every day living business, register as a foreigner in the new city, get health insurance, go to a conference two weeks into the new job (if the visa application is submitted within the first week), discuss Christmas holidays dates with the new advisor, plan itinerary, find and buy affordable tickets.

The list seemed endless and as soon as I moved here I started adding more and more things to the November list: get books to read, learn Japanese, talk to my husband daily on internet, the Christmas preparations, cards, presents, ect. It became chaotic, things were repeated in several places, I kept moving the most urgent tasks to the top of the list, but soon the top section alone was about three A4 pages of tasks.

November and early December had been like a merry-go-round. The more things I crossed off the list, the more things I was putting on it. It felt like I was ploughing through the list, and I could not see the end. I also started completely neglecting my life support systems: healthy eating, exercise, organized home. I stopped logging the food I eat, and lost control of whatever fuel I put into my body. Moving here all on my own was about too much for me to handle.

The problem with the list was that I kept it all in one file, and as it grew longer and longer it stopped being manageable. At one point in December I spend a big chunk of time and got the list organized according to GTD* principles. At that point it felt like I had most of my ideas and life projects captured there and that I had a great system for weekly and monthly planning of my projects and I finally felt organized!**

But as the life was speeding up before Christmas and the inbox kept growing bigger and bigger, and there was not enough time to review, the need to scroll up and down, and look for things in different places, soon made managing the list quite impossible.

In January I had more of happy-go-lucky period, where I ignored the most of the task on my twenty pages long list and just focused on the day-to-day survival. This resulted in the lack of focus at work and no moving forward on the new projects I am starting. Then my husband visited me for ten days, which meant even less focus at work, and on the last day of his stay I had tripped on the stairs at work and could not walk without crutches for the next two weeks.

Mid-February I have discovered a nice software tool*** for managing my To Do list. In the first few days I treated it as an inbox for all the ideas running around my head that I could not quite fit into my linear form of my now messy twenty pages To Do file.

After two weeks of testing the new software I have completed 67 tasks and I have got 184 tasks To Do on my list. And this is even before I have completed the transfer of the majority of the longer term (important and high priority) projects and their associated tasks from my twenty pages linear To Do file.

Talk about feeling overwhelmed! It feels like I am imprisoned by the To Do list!

* GTD is “Getting Things Done”, a book by David Allen, and a system of organizing your tasks and life that they become easy, manageable and even pleasurable.

** I am not a naturally organized person, I am quite the opposite: my personality is quite spontaneous and chaotic and I take the measures like organizing a planning system to prevent the ever growing chaos that my life becomes when I am myself. I guess this is a part of growing up and of mature pursuing of complex and long-term goals that demand a lot of delayed-gratification. My room is still a chaos though, and I am wondering when I am going to handle all that unpacking and tidying that is needed to be done.

*** I work on a Mac and the software is called The Hit List (still in beta version and free, once it is finished it will be paid-for). I absolutely love it!

Happy New Year!

I have disappeared from the face of the blog recently, for which I apologise*. I always find the period running up to Christmas very busy and laced with deadlines, and this time it was no different.

I relocated across Japan, started a new job, applied and got a working visa at the very last moment, went to a conference, prepared for an intercontinental trip back home and set myself up to start experimental work in the new lab. The end of 2009 was a busy time for me.

I am now back from Christmas holiday at home, fighting jet-lag** in Japan. The time at home was also busy, with family obligations and many things to “have to do”. I am glad I had a week afterwards to just rest and recover.

Someone wrote on a blog recently “I am making a resolution not to make any new years resolutions.” I am not making any either. For me the time when the days are the shortest in the year is the time for sleeping, resting and hibernating. It is not a time for reflection and planning.

It is much better done in spring. In the last 3 years I made my resolutions some time between February and April, with days getting longer and some hope in the air. I am planning on reviewing the past year and making a plan for the future one around this time this year too.

So now it is back to New Life for me in my New Job. I have recharged my batteries and let go of the remaining anxieties, which were still lingering in my system at the end of the year, even though the old job was finished. I have finally came to terms that the nightmare is now over and I can start anew with deliberate forgetting of the bad things that happened in the previous year.

Happy New Year 2010 everyone!!!


* How very Japanese of me! I started thanking people a lot and apologising profusely here. It was quite funny when a doctor back home wished me luck - by my country superstitions you are not supposed to thank for such wishes - but I forgot about this and thanked her... She admonished me (very seriously) that I should not be thanking her, to which I apologised. I am changing, I am not me any more, we do not thank or apologize routinely in my country, I am becoming Japanese... Oh, no, now my husband will leave me!

** Fighting bad east-ward jet-lag with a scientific method of avoiding and exposing myself to light according to sleep research derived British Airways jet-lag calculator.

Toasts and Croissants

As much as I would love to have a fully functional kitchen and cook myself lovely meals, I have not organised that in my new accommodation yet.

November has been a very disorganised month. The first week was pure survival, finding shops in the new location and living out of a suitcase. The next one was trip to a conference and week after that was not good for unpacking either, as my accommodation was going to have some small construction work done in the kitchen and bathroom. So I generally withhold from unpacking till this was finished at the end of November and I have been living for the first month without a fully functional kitchen.

I like cooking, and to take care of myself by preparing some nice and healthy food was one of my goals for the new life in Tokyo, but it somehow it felt like something beyond my capacity. I was lucky that there was a kettle already here, so I could at least put the kettle on and make some tea!

In the last few weeks I have been living in a true student style alternating between eating toasts and croissants, with the occasional rice ball (“onigiri”) for my meals. It is getting kind of boring!

Forms, forms, forms

///Sorry for posting this out late, I had a delay of writing the draft to pushing it up on the blog. I find that life's always busy the months before Christmas!///

The first three weeks of my new job are gone. I have been mainly submitting documents and copies of documents to comply with the bureaucratic procedures of starting a new job, registering for the new insurance, changing my address, registrations in the institutions and applying for the visa extension (which I am still waiting for).

There was a multitude of forms that I had to fill in. In Japanese, of course. And sometimes, even if the secretary translates them for me, I am still clueless on what I am actually asked to do. For example a field on the expenses claim form: “what information did you acquire”. What information did I acquire?

It turned out that “information acquired” is used to justify that there were some benefits of attending the conference for the claimant. You need to write half a page essay about the new things you learned so that you could claim the expenses. Makes sense. Not. I wonder if anyone checks this, and decides whether the claimant learned (“acquired information”) enough. Or everyone just writes it for the sheer sake of writing, so that the form is filled in correctly. This is "the Japanese way".

Forms, forms, forms. I hope that after the first month it will be over. I have now learned to accept this, it is not so much different from Eastern Europe where I come from. With practice of some stoicism in dealing with the bureaucracy, maybe I will become a better person?

The other major paperwork effort for me was the immigration. At the beginning the procedures did not feel much different here as compared to the previous place. In there the university officers were clueless and handled things in a wrong way, which resulted in a lot of apology-and-promise-not-to-do-it-again letter writing. The stress of the whole affair was not helped by me feeling tense about the memories of the previous situation, especially as my visa was running out mid-November.

Officers from the university admin office here also “know it all”, the same as in the previous place. Unfortunately sometimes they know it wrong. At least here I had our secretary’s help with the application. She physically went with me to submit the application, and it turned out that the documents the office prepared were not what was required.

Of course I tried explain to them beforehand what was needed (a different, more detailed versions of the documents), yet they “knew better”. So I went with their way without much arguing, even though I knew they were wrong. This is what I learned from previous experience. There is not much what I can do, it is all between one bureaucrat and another, and it is better if the Japanese handle the appropriate apologies and bowing themselves. I might do it the wrong way.

I guess the university officers' thinking was that they have a better sense of how to handle the Japanese procedures, even without reading the guidelines. It would be rude to tell them how I think they are clueless. Using Japanese bureaucratic intuition is not a replacement for reading the guidelines.

This intuition failed me for the second time. But I do not thing they would accept that the foreigner can actually grasp how to do the Japanese procedures correctly*, so I let them handle it their (wrong) way. In the end it is them who provide me with the necessary documents, so it is better that a Japanese officer tells the secretary the documents she prepared are wrong, and not me.

Only when the authority figure of an immigration officer explained to our secretary the same details about document requirements that I was trying to tell her previously, did the university officers provide me with the documents that I originally asked for. But this is the way it is here. It is the same as in the first workplace. There is a lot of incompetence among the bureaucrats, a lot of time wasting**, and it is masked under huge bureaucrats' over-confidence.

Anyway, the forms are now submitted, and I stopped worrying about immigration and can now focus now other aspects of my life that need attention***.

* I understand the details of the procedures, because they are explained in detail on the government’s website in English.
** They even have a specific phrase, often used on the news, to describe the Japanese bureaucratic ways: “wasteful administrative practices”.
*** My crazy To-Do list...