My first publication (peer-reviewed) has finally been published in the excellent journal Journal of Organic Chemistry! Yay!!! You probably won't be able to access the paper but anyone who's interested, you can see the abstract online at the
JoC website (2006, p7947). One hell of a lot of work went into that paper; two horrible years of a PhD (and I still have stuff to tidy up in that bit of my project) on my part and a lot of work by Cherry who found the compounds (we finally got the stereochemistry Cherry - sorry for the long wait!) and Maya and Gerhard for sorting out lots of details and writing it, so it's SOOOOOO nice to finally have it published! Maya said there must be a curse on the Malaysian fugus that the compounds were found in (the funky bonsai tree looking thing in the abstract) cos it seemed that anything that could go wrong (or at least slowly!) with the project, did!
Non-chemists may be amused to know that what took two years to get the paper published was the two dotted lines on the bit of the molecules labelled MePro. Ridiculously frustrating! But published, so thanks to everyone involved!
Just had a lovely (apart from the tired beer-induced headache I'm enjoying) weekend for Ben's birthday (the fabulous French guy who's been a great friend almost since I stepped off the plane here) in Gore Bay - a really nice secluded little village halfway between chch and kaikoura. There was a whole gang of us camping there and the blazing Nor-wester (hot hot dry wind) kept us all warm. Paula (see photo), 
my friend Anna's sister, who is staying with us for a while came along and met a grand total of about one Kiwi! Bit of an international crowd! We drank beer til there was none, played a fun German stick throwing game (which seems largely just to be an excuse to drink beer in the sun - those Germans know what they're doing!) and argued loudly into the night of the worlds woes! Then we all nursed our hangovers on the beach, watching Frenchies surf, in the warm sun. Perfect. Happy birthday Benoitito, and thanks!
