Four decades

As promised to my family I spent my 40th birthday at my Polish home.

Forty years old sounded so OLD when I was a teenager. But it doesnt feel so at all, especially when you have loving and caring people around you.

Many relatives asked me what I actually do. As in the internet meme "What People Think I Do", my family sees me as a mad AI scientist who walks on the edge and if he fails, the humankind is doomed. My friends in Poland see me as a guy who plays with Asimo-like robots every day.

The truth is that I actually have several jobs at my lab from the secretary to the safety manager and network administration chief (luckily students can help me with this one). What the lowest level "professor has to do? He is buying staff from one clip to a server, applying for students trips, managing the network, arranging teaching assistant schedules and payments, receiving and sorting letters, documents, magazines, advising students, applying for study/visa permissions and dorms for foreign students, planning their stays and research topics, writing weekly and monthly reports for various university instances, helping members with writing programs and filling applications, attending lab advertising events, proofreading papers, arranging stays for visiting scholars, organizing parties, designing and printing event posters, watching if somebody is trying to cheat during exams, and many other more or less time consuming tasks. And then, if time allows, I read and review papers, learn, program, experiment and publish / present, apply for grants, organize conferences. I dont have much teaching though, because, in theory, the adjunct professor is supposed to concentrate on research :)

Doing so many things at one place makes you feel at home. Also, having everything under control and doing all kind of tasks is a way to show that a foreigner can deal with every aspect of the job as well as his Japanese colleagues (although it is still unfeasible without knowing the language, at least at our department).