AptaMer's Intro

[AptaMer]

Well, this is kind of an introduction. I'm AptaMer, and I joined here in 2012, have posted lots about a lot of things, but never got around to posting an introduction. There always seemed to something better to post than an introduction. Actually, you could say it seemed like a boring thing to do, and I procrastinated. Anyhow, it's time.

Who is AptaMer? You could say lots of things that are obvious- I'm a boy (gender) of very average size (physical) I'm a scientist (career) all that boring stuff. Am I a Mer? Of course; although I've changed my idea of a mersona from a traditional, Triton-style merman to something more exotic. More on that later.

My Mer name? Well, in the course of my work, we have been interested in aptamers (yes, they exist, you can find out about them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptamer ) and I just had to use that name for my mersona.

I've been blessed to have a very different life from the average. What you'd have to get to know me to find out, is that when I was born, my family lived on the water. My parents didn't even own a car, they had a boat they kept docked on the other side of the sidewalk from our front yard, and we would boat everywhere, and in our little house you could hear water sounds and harbour traffic sounds day and night. I was a real water baby.

We moved. My formative years were spent in a third-world country in West Africa. My family always gravitated to the water though. We would go on holidays to a beach where we would stay in cottages by the shore. I can still remember the sound of the surf and the steady wind blowing around the house. I think all these things made the water part of my soul.

So like everybody else I went to school, then to college. Majored in science. Booooring. Except, my university was affiliated with a marine research station and we got to do marine biology courses, and my very first summer job was to work studying freshwater clams in Nova Scotia.

All the students who wanted to have research jobs involving diving had to get certified, so I signed up for the campus diving certification course, and what a course it was! This was no recreational, resort style certification. Our instructor was a coast guard rescue swimmer, and he said if we were going to learn to be working divers we had to learn teamwork, handling pressure and emergency situations, and diving in adverse situations. We did all kind of training that seemed hair-raising at the time, but was good for us. I've never panicked or gotten into an emergency situation since then. We never got a break, our open water certification was done in murky harbour water in February. We had to break up a sheet of ice a few millimtres thick so we could get in the water- no fun certification dive for us-LOL.

What I found out was that various people in the area around my university wanted diving work done, so I started doing odd jobs diving- cleaning things, retrieving things, fixing things underwater. All kinds of part time work diving for research projects too. I got paid $40-$80 an hour, at a time when students working the typical minimum-wage jobs on the university campus were getting just over $5 an hour. Also, due to my time in Africa, I had no prudishness or body shame, so I also worked as a life model for the art department and got $20 per hour. The summer research jobs also paid reasonably well, and I was able to graduate with no student debt. I would urge all you young Mers heading off to college to think creatively about jobs while you're there. There always seem to be ways to make more money than average if you look around. It will make a big difference in your finances and your optons once you graduate. Hey, maybe a bunch of merstudents could put together a mer-performance businesss while they're in college?

So life carried on. I did a PhD, had a research career, have since gotten into biotech. A note about graduate school. The university I did grad school at has a policy that students must have salary support; either from scholarships, salary paid from their supervisor's research grants, or teaching jobs povided by their department; so again, I didn't accumulate student debt. This is really important, to my mind. If you're thinking of going to graduate school, make sure they have this policy.

Science has been good to me, I've had fun, worked in and visited 19 countries so far. So how old am I? Probably older than you-LOL. I've decided to stay 39.

The funny thing is. SCUBA diving became indelibly associated with work in my mind, and I never got into recreational SCUBA diving. A few years ago I dicovered freediving, though, and I'm in love with it. This is my kind of diving, and of course, it fits in perfectly with the fun of mermanning (is that a word?)

Well, I'll sign off for now. Hope you found my intro interesting.

Note added in edit: I'm also a Ballet & Jazz freak. As in dancing. Have gone to class since . . . forever. Since discovering it in my university days. There's nothing I love so much as dancing at an event or onstage. Sadly, due to time pressures, I quit the dance company I was in about 5 years ago. Big mistake! Need to get back to my roots.

[PearlieMae]

Sounds like an adventure to me! Now, off to read about aptamers...

[Talia]

Oh my, what an interesting life you have had!

I work in a lab, and I had never heard of aptamers. Very interesting!

[SeaGlass Siren]

*old granny voice*

about tiiiime aptamerr!

[Mermaid Galene]

Enjoyed reading about your life & mersona, and about aptamers! As another mer with a science background, it's always cool to learn something I didn't know.

[Echidna]

Well, those aptamers are very fascinating.
You must have an interesting job! (boring, my fin.)

I too have lived in many different places and vastly differing cultures.
Just a good thing I didn't know as much back then about (tropical) parasites, or I would have lived in constant fear :p

[AniaR]

No idea you had connections to novascotia cool!!!

[Marty]

Interesting story, life & research. Pleased to meet another freediving merman.

[Merman Jamie]

Hello

[AptaMer]

No idea you had connections to novascotia cool!!!

Well, my first summer job was the clam study at Acadia University in Wolfville. We used to drive over to Blue Rocks near Lunenburg to, ahem "collect" edible fish and crustaceans http://www.euroclubschools.net/userimages/th_forkknife.gif

Later on I worked at Dalhousie University for six months. Got to know the {{Cold}} waters of Nova Scotia well- LOL

I'm actually doing some work at the moment for a company in Halifax that is developing a diagnostic system. If I end up going there on business, perhaps it might be possible to say hello over a nice cup of fish juice?

[AptaMer]

I too have lived in many different places and vastly differing cultures.
Just a good thing I didn't know as much back then about (tropical) parasites, or I would have lived in constant fear :p

That's nice to know that you had a varied background, Echidna.

My parents told me all about the diseases. I remember them telling me to stay away from a flooded rice field one time because "you can get a disease from the snails" (so I had to look it up as soon as I had a chance- bilharzia.) They also told us to avoid blackflies at the river (good luck with that!) since they spread a disease called river blindness. I now know the disease as onchocerciasis- and my friends and I thought it was pretty cool as evil things go. I mean, what other villanous disease gets microscopic worms into your blood that burrow into your skin and eyes and eat them out! No comic book writer ever thought of anything as badass as that! We used to delight in telling the younger kids that they would check you for river blindness by getting scissors and cutting a piece out of your side (technically true- they used surgical scissors to sample a tiny chunk of skin) but we implied they were going to be missing a part of their sides and had them quaking in fear- until our parents got on our case and made us stop. The hospital in our town had a preserved Guinea worm over a metre long they had taken out of someone's leg. Our parents told us you got them from walking around barefoot (very effective at getting us to wear shoes) but I later found out you get them from contaminated drinking water.

It's funny- to us kids, diseases that I now realize would horrify Canadians, were just part of life. You learned about them, did the right things so the baddies wouldn't get you, and life went on.

[AniaR]

Yeah there's nothing really all that dangerous here lol

[SeaGlass Siren]

except maybe harper.

[AptaMer]

LOL- SeaGlass!!! So true! :highfive:

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