Hi Marcus,

I kept promising myself I'd write once things settled, but I'm starting to suspect "settled" isn't on the menu this year. As you probably heard from Dana, I took the position at the Maritime Institute and drove out to Halifax at the end of March, just ahead of the spring sampling season.

The arrival was rockier than planned. The sublet I'd arranged collapsed forty-eight hours before I got there — the tenant decided not to vacate after all — so I spent my first three weeks in a colleague's unfinished basement, drafting grant reports next to her furnace. I've since signed a proper lease in Clayton Park, which I like well enough, though it puts me forty minutes by bus from the waterfront lab, and the early ferry sampling runs begin before the buses do.

Work itself is the real puzzle. The cod acoustics project I was recruited for lost a chunk of its vessel time when the institute's icebreaker was reassigned to an Arctic charter, and my supervisor has quietly stopped copying me on the cruise planning threads. Last week the director floated the idea of transferring me to their partner facility in Victoria, where a comparable study is fully funded and, in her words, "actually leaving the dock."

On paper it's an easy call. In practice, my lease runs through next August, I've only just started to find my footing here, and I can't shake the feeling that accepting the transfer would confirm certain people's view that I was surplus from the start. You went through something like this when the Winnipeg office folded — you took the move and never looked back, if I remember right. Was it as obvious a decision at the time as you make it sound now?

I'd genuinely value your read on this. No rush, but the director wants an answer before the month is out.

Warmly, Priya