Helen FieldsScience Writer

My measure of success in a foreign language is being able to get through transactions at stores – stores where you have to talk, not supermarkets – without the other person switching to English. I’m achieving this in German, so, three cheers! Example: Today I bought a SIM card for my phone. I told the guy I wanted a SIM card, I told him, no, I didn’t already have a phone number, I said, yes, my American Handy (the german word for cellphone – nice, eh?) will work here, and signed various things, all with him only saying “Thank you” once. Yessss!

It’s a good thing I’m having successes outside of the classroom, because in my intensive German class, I’m kind of a mess. My grammar’s not bad and I think my accent is pretty decent, but my vocabulary is the size of a flea. If I ask for the meaning of a word, I get a definition that uses other words I don’t know. Today we watched a half hour of one of the TV morning shows and everybody else seemed to understand what was going on in the news stories – they could discuss content – and I was the one who the teacher had other people practice their explaining skills on. (“Oriol, can you explain Formula 1 racing to Helen?”)

Oh well, it’s probably good for me to be the laggard in a language class for once in my life. The other students have been here for several weeks already, so it’s not really fair to compare myself to them. And I really do speak quite well (evidence: the SIM card transaction). I just need to expand my vocabulary, and I think two months of living here is going to be very good for that.

The most annoying thing about Europe is the trouble it takes to get here. My flying experience, I must say, was really not that nice. The first flight, from Dulles to Newark, was in a turboprop, and it started out just fine – I fell asleep, which is my measure of a good flight, and was dozing peacefully when suddenly the plane started jumping up and down. We hit three patches in a row of serious unexpected turbulence. A coke went flying (and not onto the person who’d ordered it) and there was some minor shrieking. Also, the temperature inside the plane was about 300 degrees. I think we were all pretty happy to make it out alive.

I had a much worse moment on the second flight, though, the one from Newark to Berlin. We had to sit for two hours on the runway in Newark because of a storm, but that wasn’t the bad part – they turned on the entertainment system and brought around water and snacks, and the time went very fast. No, the problem was Atul Gawande’s book Complications, about learning to be a surgeon. When I bought this book at the airport, I forgot that I am totally squeamish. After I woke up Monday morning, I opened it up and got to about the fifth page, where he describes his first attempt to put in a central line. (It didn’t go well.) By the time I had the sense to close the book, I had broken into a full-fledged cold sweat and I thought I was going to throw up. Whoops. I really want to read this book, though – maybe I can get through if I take it a few pages at a time, and also avoid reading it in the window seat of a 757 after two hours of bad sleep.

Despite the moments of misery, I would recommend Continental – it wasn’t their fault I made a bad choice of reading material, and the pilot on the second flight was really good about keeping us updated and informed during the two hours of waiting.

Since a lot of what I do for a living is type while talking on the phone, I thought it would be smart to sort out my headset issues. (See vivid visual representation of headset issues here.)

I do have a headset – it’s the kind with a little plug that goes into the side of a cordless phone. But it doesn’t really work. I have to strain to hear, especially with quieter people. Which is a problem when I’m trying to type what they’re saying, understand what they’re saying, laugh at their jokes, and think of my next question, all at the same time.

First I looked into getting one of those headsets that goes on an old-school corded phone, between the thing you hold in your hand and the base of the phone. I had these at my last two jobs and they worked great. But when I looked into those headsets, I discovered why it was always such a huge production to get the office people to order one. At the low end, they’re about $150, and they go up (way up) from there.

It was time to consider alternatives. My dad has the same basic setup as me – a cheap headset that plugs into the side of a cordless phone – but he claims that his actually works. So I decided to try the scientific method. I spent a day at my parents’ house, trying out various alternatives while I reported a story about piranhas. First, I did an interview with my dad’s headset and cordless phone. Yep – it worked. I could hear.

Next, I talked to someone while using my dad’s cordless phone and *my* headset. Whaddya know – that worked, too. So clearly the problem was not with the headset, it was my cheapo cordless phone, right? So I bought a better phone, for about $40. I brought it home. I plugged in my headset (already proven to work). I called my dad to test it while typing. And it still wasn’t loud enough.

It turns out I’d left out one factor: When I’m at my parents’ house, I type on my laptop keyboard. When I’m at home, I type on my external keyboard, which goes CLACKETY CLACKETY CLACKETY. The problem wasn’t my headset – it was that my keyboard is too dang loud. So now I do phone interviews with the headset on my left ear and an earplug in my right. This also blocks out the sounds of the AC and the occasional freight train. I did other tests and discovered that my cheapo cordless phone was also part of the problem, so I’m using the new phone, too.

And everybody is happy! Except my massage therapist. Ha ha, kidding – I can’t afford massages. I was just going to mess up my shoulder and enjoy it, dang it. While walking uphill both ways. In the snow.

I really need a new headset.

I didn’t take a picture of the right side of my face for comparison, but I’ll just assure you that my other ear is not bright red, nor are the buttons of my phone imprinted into my other cheek.

I have a headset that plugs into one of my cordless phones. But with that setup, I can barely hear the people who talk really loud, let alone people like the very quiet scientist I just interviewed. What I want is a headset that plugs into the corded phone, between the phone and the handset. I have a feeling the good ones cost a lot of money. I had a really good one at my last job, but I’m just too darn moral to steal office equipment. Sigh.

I’ve been doing some work for a former employer ever since I left in 2007. It’s stuff I could perfectly well do at home, but…well, I was having trouble motivating to do it at home. So I asked if I could go in for a couple of days, and they set me up with an office. I went in for two days this week.

It was actually really nice to go in and see people. There are some I’m in touch with, but I’m not in touch with, for example, Vince the mailroom guy. I went out to lunch with colleagues, and I actually had friends to go say hi to when I needed a break! At home when I need a break, I can…uh…well, there’s always facebook.

I came back from lunch today and this was on my chair:

Yep. I’ve been gone for two years, and I’m still on hospital junk mail lists. (This made me laugh. I love that Vince dropped this off for me.)

Here’s how you know you’re on a ship:

All the computers are tied down. I don’t think we’ve actually had any boat movement that would be dramatic enough to slide a laptop off a table, but I’m glad they’re tied down anyway. This is one of the public laptops with internet. Instruments in the lab are tied down, too. Also, a lot of work surfaces have some kind of sticky, rubbery mesh material stretched over them and stapled down, so you can set things down and be pretty sure they won’t slide away.

I was worried about seasickness before I came on board, but here’s the result: I never had any. Well, I never got nauseous. For one thing, the ship just didn’t move that much. In the ice, it mostly kind of bounces around – not the steady movement that makes you sick – and we were in the ice for the vast majority of the trip. When we did get into open water with some swells, all it did was make me a bit sleepy. We’re back in open water now, but the big, scary, stormy Bering Sea is doing its best impression of a pond.

I did get land-sick early in the trip – I’d feel dizzy when we stopped all day at the ice. I’m kind of dreading being really back on land. A science writer friend of mine who used to be an oceanographer told me he was always land-sick for three times as long as he was on the boat, which would put me into early August. Yikes. Let’s hope I’m not like him. (Well, other than his wild success as a freelancer.)

Here’s another picture from that same day when I sat reading outside the bridge. It was really sunny!

The other day we stopped next to a big piece of ice for a few hours. It was a sunny day, 35 degrees and not particularly windy. The sun was on the side of the ship away from the wind, so a lot of the decks outside were really warm. I didn’t need to go on the ice that day because we were writing about some science on the ship, so I parked myself with a magazine on a high-up deck, just outside one of the doors to the bridge.

The jacket is under me because the deck was too hot to sit on comfortably, and I had to take off my sweater, too – that’s how warm it was. It was great being outside. I could smell the steak grilling for dinner. When gulls flew by, I heard them instead of just seeing them through the window. I heard the engines fire up when it was time to move on from the ice station.

They only needed to move the ship a quarter mile or so, to an open spot where they could put in the CTD, an instrument for measuring and collecting water. Normally I would’ve had to go inside when we started moving because of the wind, but the ice was so thick around there that the ship only made it about half a ship-length before it ground to a halt. The guy who was driving had to back and ram for about half an hour to get the ship a few ship lengths away. Meanwhile, I was reading about solitary confinement in the New Yorker. (Yikes.)

Finally I started worrying that the sunscreen in my lotion wasn’t going to protect me anymore and I went inside. Well, also, some fire alarm was kept going off, and I figured the people on the bridge would let me know if something was actually wrong.

I had the steak for dinner that night – it was really good.

More about me! I know, you just can’t get enough! The lovely people over at Smithsonian Magazine wrote a nice little blog post about what Chris the photographer and I are doing out here in the Bering Sea. Well, actually, I wrote most of it – it’s a Q&A.

Today’s dispatch has three, count them THREE, pictures of me. I’m labeled in two of them. I learned from the other one that my hat makes my head look really pointy. It’s super warm, though, so fashion be damned.

Also, I had to use up the caption on picture #7 explaining science, not defending my fashion choices, so I would just like to say here that the fanny pack is the best way to hold my notebook while I’m working on the ice or on deck – when someone says something funny, I can pull off my giant warm mitten and grab my notebook out of the pack.