It has been a tough couple of weeks, as I have been suffering from a nasty viral infection. I have been teetering for several days along the borderline between being able to work or staying in bed. Rightly or wrongly, I have been struggling into the lab, and for that I thank (or blame) my parents for instilling a strong work ethic in me.

Nevertheless it has very much been a case of energy conservation over the past couple of weeks. To facilitate this I have been doing the following:

• Taking long coffee and lunch breaks. Getting out of the micro lab early.
• Keeping the number and content of emails to an absolute minimum.
• Ruthlessly declining all options and requests for ‘voluntary’ work/projects.
• Keeping a low profile (for infection control reasons!)

And funnily enough, despite my compromised health, I have been keeping up, and quite easily as well.

It is amazing that we manage to ‘squeeze’ into an 8 hour working day what we should really be doing in 3 or 4, maybe even less…

Maybe I need to be sick more often…

Michael