inaprropriate authority

After garnering myself a somewhat frenetic fan, I decided to bury my head in my work and not think about things til it all went away. Step one, get to know interesting people in the department and try to start some collaborative ventures with them.
My first meeting, with my co-worker and a permanent member of staff who heads up a related, but different, group in the department did not get off to a good start. After being ignored for about twenty minutes as the two men talked, the senior academic turned to me and inquired whether I was planning to get pregnant in the next few months !!!! My jaw literally dropped and I looked to my colleague to see his eyes popping too. Such questions are not only inappropriate but illegal as hell.
Later on we heard that said academic is known for having liaisons with his PhD students....Hmm no surprises there then.

Meanwhile back in stalkerville things were hotting up. So hot in fact that there was meltdown. Not mine, I hasten to add - mr beamline scientist. Not only were the texts flowing fast and frequent with questions about why we had "broken up" but also he started having a mental breakdown with what seemed to be serious depression, and was constantly phoning at 3 am threatening to off himself. So it came as no surprise to hear he was taking time of work. I made sure to emphasize the need for medication and therapy and started to look into changing my number...

welcome to my world...

So I'm a female scientist in a male-dominated research area, and I'm single, pushing thirty and mildly ambitious. Sounds ideal you say...? NO. Stereotypes about male geeks exist for a reason, and I had the misfortune to be well endowed with those physical assets that evolution has seen fit to make particularly appealing to the other half of the species, as well as a modicum of talent in the brain department.

In your average office environment breasts can be a distinct aid in advancing one's career; not so in academia. Half the professors are trying to sleep with you and the other half think you're a floozy who only got her post through sleeping with a professor or two.... nevermind if my academic credentials are top notch (which they are, thank you for asking).

The other PDRA's (that's Post Doctoral Research Associates) are, on the whole, much better, except that the gossip that follows you around should you be spotted talking to someone for more than half a minute is ridiculous to the extent that, according to the rumour mill, I've been romantically involved with everyone in the open-plan office I work in, at least twice.

As a geeky gal I do like my science buffs but some of them aren't half crazy. A lot of my work involves working at big national facilities called synchotrons: these are ring-doughnut-shaped particle accelerators (just like CERN) which provide tightly collimated beams of high energy x-rays which can be exploited in a variety of diffraction or spectroscopy experiments to provide all sorts of structural and dynamic information. Sorry, I got a little carried away there. I generally do diffraction. This means that I use the x-rays to tell me where all the atoms are sitting within a crystalline solid such as steel, or quartz, or dentin (the mineral found in teeth). Right, okay, enough science back to gossip. So I spend a lot of time at these big facilities, there are several scattered around the world, CERN is the most well known and although it focuses on high energy particle physics, other experiments do take place there too. I haven't been there yet. There are also synchotrons in France, Germany and the UK. These are high pressure environments where you have limited time to work round the clock (yes 24 hours) on experiments which invariably break down half way through or don't work as they are supposed to or don't work at all. Added to this you have a lot of different nationalities packed in and forced to work together in close proximity, with little sleep, fueled by foul tasting pseudo-coffee from those awful little machines and food that, at best, tastes of cardboard, is of suspect origin and is likely to make you ill. It's not easy to manage to get on these experiments - "beam time" (access to the synchotron and experimental equipment etc) is very expensive (~£10,000 per day) and you have to bid for time which is granted sparingly. So being on a synchotron experiment is a bit like being in a pressure cooker, it's unsurprising if now and then something goes to pot and the lid blows off.

I'd gone for the first time in a long time to do a diffraction experiment, it was a particularly tricky experimental set up requiring lots of help from the beam line scientist. Who, though  geeky, was a bit of a sweetie. Ok so we spent a lot of time chatting.. fixing the experiment...fretting about the results... and...no not sex. But after the end of the experiment drinks in a local pub, some real deep and meaningful chatter, and then back off to the home institution not to see them again for a good long while.

How wrong could I have been? Mr beam line scientist turned up in my office the next week. Apparently, he had  business there with another researcher. Ok fair enough, and no I suppose I didn't mind going out for lunch (it felt rude to refuse and I still needed help with analysing the results). And it was fun, and I was a bit flattered ...........
.......and then he announced he was going to move across the continent to live in the same city as me and was I keen on having children soonish? Lol, you are funny, oh .... you're not joking? You're not? Er....wtf? Seriously though, that is not what you say over a lunch stealth date (stealth date - when you realise you have been taken on a date when you thought it was nothing of the sort) even if you are crazy enough to think it. Cue really awkward situation #1.
The synchotron stalker
symptoms: latches onto female visitors to the beam line
follows them to their cities of residence and place of work
keeps turning up in their office weeks after has been gently let down
starts phoning at all hours of the day and night
constantly invites you to submit more proposals for beam time
still turns up at your place of work
writes poetry
declares love

Solution? Heck if I know: suggestions please?