'If there's one thing you can say about man-kind, there's nothing kind about man'

You may recognise that I am having a Tom Waits period. Fear not, my faith in mankind has not been crushed entirely! His 'dulcit' tones are the soundtrack to this post, and I couldn't think of a better title, although it's not quite as amusing if you don't 'sing' it like he does! Maybe my new theme for post titles will have to be classic Tom Waits lines. That man is a musical genius!

Not much been going on round this neck of the woods, but I'll try to hussle up a couple of stories. Just about surviving a legendarily crappy English 'summer'. I've been promising Sean an Indian summer for a couple of months now, but what we currently have is flash flooding. Nice to know the man upstairs has a sense of humour! Been to Bath, an ancient Roman city right next to Bristol, twice in the last couple of weeks, so can show you a couple of photos. As the name might suggest it was the site of Roman spa baths so my mum and I went for a lovely relaxing girly trip to marinade ourselves. The week before Sean and I had done the opposite of a relaxing trip by cycling there and back! There's a cycle path which follows an old trainline, which, whilst pleasantly hill-free, is pretty long at 16 miles. My intention was to cycle there, and then take a leisurely trainride back. Sean had other ideas and convinced me to cycle home again too - so it was a 35 mile trip once we'd also cycled up and down the hill to uni. We were knackered that night, but not at all achy the next day, which was a pretty proud moment - all those morning hill climbs must be paying off!
Here's a cuppla photos:


Bristol seems to be king of the festivals, with harbour, balloon and kite festivals already this summer. The Bristol Balloon festival is particularly nice, with hundreds of balloons taking part in a mass ascent. Unfortunately the weather prevented all but one of the evening flights, but below is a shot of the one that made it, although the resolution doesn't do justice to the number of balloons and majesty of the event. My poor schedule reading skills meant we missed out on seeing the 'night glow' where anchored balloons light up their flames in time to music with fireworks, but we did get to see the red arrows. The kite festival we also missed, although ironically whilst it was the wind (and rain for that matter) that brought the balloon festival down, there was a distinct lack of wind on the weekend of the kite festival. More evidence for God's sense of humour!

And in other news, to cheer myself up in a brief moment of glum (regarding other kittens which I don't think I've ever mentioned) I wrote to the guys who took our little cuties, Monty and Grey (now Lucy) and...got photos! They definately look a bit bigger and more grown up, but look as happy as ever. Evidently enjoying each other's company/killing each other as much as ever. And they have their very own little tent - something we never afforded them, so they've obviously landed on their feet with their new owners! Lovely to see that we did the right thing by at least some of the 'maison de bonheur' kittens.

So yeah, no other tales really. I'll have to start writing a few posts about ideas and thoughts, rather than waiting for interesting stories, which are relatively few and far between! Hope ya'll are well.

Procrastination Entertainment Service

There have been complaints amongst the crowd that I am not providing adequate thesis procrastination distraction - a well-observed complaint. My apologies go to you, my favourite bovine biomass expert. Soon to be Dr Bovine Biomass Expert.

Well, Sean arrived a couple of weeks ago, so we've been doing all sorts of exploring and fun stuff. He's met all the family and a lot of my mates, and can even remember most of the names! After pouring down with rain solidly for a week and a half (during which time he complained continuously) the summer has finally returned so he's more keen on England now. We've been having a lot of post-work, beer-garden beers which always helps. And there are lots of wicked bands for us to see. Including a ridiculous weekend of fun this last weekend involving my personal favourite live band - Kora - as well as Lyrics Born who we've wanted to see for ages (and who I subjected Dr BBE to many times in the lab). And boy did both Kora and Lyrics Born kick some bootie! By the end I ached all over from dancing like a crazy fool at the front at both! There's a couple of photos below. Lyrics Born was playing on a boat venue in Bristol which was pretty small giving the gig a very intimate feel (he bashed me a couple of times in our combined crazy dancing!). And Kora were there usual simply fabulous selves. The crowd was about 90% Kiwis which made me a bit 'home'-sick for NZ! Got Kings of Leon, Goldfrapp, Roots Manuva and a pile of other great acts to look forward to as well and we were even too lazy to go back to London to see Manu Chao - I love being back in Europe!

The fabulous Thekla - the boat venue LB played on, complete with authentic Banksy painted on the side (that white dot - couldn't get a close up this time, but I'll try to get one - must have been a bit of a logistical coup to get grafitti on the river side of a boat!)

We really were right next to LB!

Get down!

My favourite bro's driving the crowd mad

Atmospheric scene at the Kora gig (get back on there Brad!)

The slug battle seems to be finally coming to an end. Whilst my efforts were partly responsible, we suddenly have a load of frogs living in our garden, and I'd say they're helping us out. We can even hear them croaking away in the evening. And we have our first courgette!

We've been keeping our eye out for banksy's and have seen a couple - including this one which is just down the road from uni, but it still took me 3 months to notice! It's next to the children's hospital - I didn't realise before but he often designs his graffiti to tie in with a nearby landmark.

So yeah, life in Brizzle is treating us well. Missing a lot about NZ, but the novelty of being back, the excellent entertainment, plus the fact it's STILL summer (a double summer really is a bit surreal and winter will be tough I suspect!) stops me missing it too much. I'm missing a lot of people though - y'all know who you are!

And on that note, hope all's well with you all.

PS Right, there you go, young lady. Now GET BACK TO YOUR THESIS YOU SLACKER! (you may make a cup of coffee first though)

Settling in

At this rate of posting everyone will bugger off, and quite rightly! Things are mostly going well here and I'm settling in pretty well. Our flat still isn't completely sorted, but I have now lovingly planted out a variety of slug foods, also known as vegetables. I like to avoid killing critters unnecessarily so have discovered an exciting new passtime - snail picking. This is where I lovingly 'rehome' snails and slugs from my back garden, to my front garden, where they can't do much damage. And despite having quite literally taken hundreds of them out in the first few weeks after I cleared the garden, I still managed to pick at least 50 of the little darlings tonight. Apparently they don't much like if you put eggshells around your plants, so I've been eating a lot of omelettes. It may be helping a bit, but while you're picking snails off the eggshells you begin to wonder. Must say, if we'd had the same slug problems in NZ I doubt we'd have got as into growing veggies - it certainly takes the shine off it!

Otherwise life in the new flat is ok. I've only ever lived on my own for 6 weeks before this; I went partially mad then and I'm probably getting a little loco now too. It's the talking to yourself which is the big worry! Sean arrives in early July, so hopefully my sanity will return then! Been spending a lot of time at uni anyway, after having decided not to spend so much time working when I finished my phd. I figure it's ok cos there's nothing much for me to do at home except talk to myself, and the snails, but when Sean gets here there will be no more late evenings in the lab. I intend to take full advantage of the fantastic local pub at the bottom of our road and to develop a beer belly. They do great pie and mash there too! One of the things I complained most bitterly about in NZ was the lack of small local pubs that you can just have a quiet midweek pint in, so to have one of the nicest little pubs I've been in as our local is a bit of a result! They even do a really tasty local beer (as well as local ciders, which I still don't feel I'm ready for).

I haven't seen Bristol's most famous (indeed, realistically, only) tourist attraction; the suspension bridge, but I promise to bring you a photo of this fine piece of British architecture as soon as I can be bothered to cycle over there. Well I'm actually lying, I can see the very top of the bridge from the end of my road (we're on a hill), but that doesn't count. Bristol is quite a nice looking city, not entirely dissimilar to Sheffield (where i did my undergrad). Lovely rows of terraced houses, often painted bright colours. There's a nice, I guess, cathedral thingie (I've only seen it at speed as I come hurtling down the hill on my bike) as well. The city shopping centre is an absolute dive though - very depressing place somehow. Actually that may be partly for another reason. I've discovered recently that my increasing awareness of ways to limit my impact on the environment has taken all the fun out of shopping. Bugger! I finally now get paid properly so I could buy any clothes I wanted (well, within reason) but I find myself saying - yeah but do I need this? Where was it made? Where were the raw materials grown? Do I not already have something similar? And before I know it I've spent hours wandering round the shops and couldn't find anything that I 'needed' enough to get rid of the guilt! Now realistically, this is an entirely healthy position to find myself in - I DO have plenty of clothes already, and I DON'T need any more. But I still hate it, there's no joy in shopping anymore!

Work's going ok. I'm feeding my bugs some special precursors to see if they put them into their natural products, which I reckon is kinda cool! Never done anything like that before. The people are all cool, although there is definately a bit of politics and eggshells you have to avoid treading on in the group it seems. Still, they're all very welcoming and it's quite a giggle usually.

Well, I'd like to have some photos to show ya'll Brizzol and our new flat and stuff, but I don't so it'll have to be in the next exciting installment! Hope all's well with you all.

I haven’t updated for ages because life has been ridiculously manic! A month and a hlaf ago I finished my PhD, and since then I’ve corrected and submitted my final thesis, submitted a paper for publication (and unfortunately had it rejected), been for a week holiday with my parents in NZ, graduated, sold all my stuff, packed up and sorted all my life out ready to leave NZ, left NZ, had a couple of flying visits to family and friends, moved to Bristol, found a flat, moved into it, been cleaning all the stuff that the landlord was too lazy to do (which is a lot), turned the garden from a jungle back into a garden and started my new job! That’s a long sentence, cos it’s been a long month and a half!

The holiday with my parents was great – one last cruise round the south island before leaving. We did stuff I’d never usually do, which was great – like fishing (my dad caught a big red snapper which made a fantastic lunch!) and horse-riding (with me on the one who thought he was a race horse!). Also got a chance to go see an ‘exhibition’ organised by Banksy and other street artists in London. They took over a tunnel and sprayed on most available surfaces! Plus there were installations and stuff, like a tree filled with CCTV cameras including a nest with baby cameras in! Random other artists could come in during the day and do their own work wherever they wanted, so you could see people working on it too.

The new job is going well, with really friendly people in my office. Already been out for drinkies a couple of times with them and got invited over for a fantastic home-cooked traditional English roast! It’s gonna take a long while to get the research up and running cos the cells I’ll be working with take a week to get to the useful stage! Plus there’s equipment which I’ll need which isn’t ready yet, but I’m keeping myself out of mischief.

The new flat is nice, although it takes a while to make it feel like home. We have our own garden which needs A LOT of work, but is slowly getting there. Hopefully the veggies will be in soon, and hopefully I can find a way to keep the MILLIONS of snails away from them. I’ve never seen so many snails in my whole life.

Well, I did get a few nice photos along the way this month, so here ya go:

Dad captured this photo of a fantail - he also got lots of shots of branches upon which a fantail had once sat! They're fast little buggers!

Kayaking in the Marlborough sounds

He also caught this impressive fish, which made a SUPERB lunch!

And dad ALSO captured this once in a lifetime shot of a dolphin in the Abel Tasman region.

And a couple of pieces at Banksy's street art exhibition:

That's Dr Murphy to you lot!

So guess who's now a Dr?! I had my final exam yesterday and a minor hangover today! Gave a talk in front of the department first, and here I am in full flow:

Then after lunch, I had a two and a half exam which went mostly well, except for a couple of questions that threw me, but most was fine. Then when I came out I got given a VERY tasty bottle of champagne by Sean, which unfortunately I ended up drinking three glasses of! Couple of photos of the momentous occasion below!

Me with my thesis and bottle of champagne at the desk that was my home for 4 years.

Long time, no blog

It's been manic here, which explains my lack of blog activity. Despite the fact that stress levels were going to be increased exponentially as a result, I decided to go to Glenorchy (near Queenstown) to do a walk I've been keen to do since I got here - the Dart-Rees track. It was a four day tramp, which took a fair chuck of time away, leaving my extensive list of things-to-do-before-I-can-leave-the-country undone. It was worth it though, with great views, ideal weather and great fun. Seemed that every mountain down there had its own glacier. Was a pretty tough walk covering something like 60km (I think), but without any electricity, and being too lazy to make friends with my fellow trampers meant I got 11 hours of sleep every night!

Now I'm back in chch and facing the carnage which is the next couple of weeks. I have my final PhD exam as well as an hour seminar to give to the department next Monday, plus papers and lab work to finish and packing up my life before heading home. Can't complain though - I'll be taking some more holidays with my parents who are visiting soon, before heading for the mothership.

Oh yeah, and go on Monty Panesar!

Anyway, so here's some photos of the trip. Wish me luck next week! Hopefully by then I'll be a doctor!

Rees valley

Lucky cows




Top of the glacier-formed Rees valley


Over the saddle and looking down into the top of the Dart valley

Dart glacier




Further down the Dart valley



Dart river

View back to towards Glenorchy

Goodbye little buddies

On Saturday we bade a very teary farewell to our lovely little cats, Monty and Grey, who adopted us a year ago. We found them a great home with two lovely people and apparently they're settling in very well. Of course that doesn't make up for the big hole they've left in our lives. They were so much a part of the life in our house that it seems really quiet and sad without their friendly faces. They were great buddies to have around during the stress of a PhD. Well here's a last couple of photos of them.

A slightly teary goodbye

Fair trade fortnight

Apparently it's fair trade fortnight in the UK, so I thought I'd mention it. I heard somewhere (although I can't back it up) that the UK is one of the forerunners with fair trade products and that we buy more than any other country. Good on us! It's certainly gaining ground here in NZ, and our uni just went 100% fair trade coffee across campus. Can't get fair trade bananas here though, so there's room for improvement.

Not that long ago, a major portion of a families income would be spent on food but these days its a very small proportion (haven't got the figures, but there was an article on BBC news about it a wee while back). Admittedly we now spend a lot more money on housing costs, but our attitudes have changed to thinking that it's our right to have a new mobile phone and a big TV and a etc etc. I admit to liking being able to have quite a lot of luxuries in my life, but we should probably start to remember that they are actually just bonuses and to be able to eat a huge array of great food (and indeed we throw large portions of it away) is a privilage we shouldn't take for granted. We should be willing to pay a fair price for our food, both from a social point of view (ie fair trade) but also an environmental point of view. If we spent more on our food we'd have less money to spend on junk that we really don't need and we'd only buy those luxuries that were genuinely important to us.

It should go without saying that all trade should be fair so lets support it.

Some more pics

Last weekend I met up with an old friend of mine, from my days living in Switzerland, on the Queen Charlotte track near Picton. She's recently moved to Wellington for a year, and since I'm heading back to the mothership soon, we decided to meet halfway between. Of course, we weren't dedicated enough to actually walk the Queen Charlotte track, but fortunately for us it's one of the few tracks in NZ that has road access to many points and hostels (no pesky camping!). We had a great few days, we did a small bit of the walk (enough to wear ourselves out and justify several beers afterwards!), some serious chilling in the sun and I was forced to endure more pop in the car than I've listened to in ages! OK, I'll admit that I secretly enjoyed the ol' Britney best of, though!

So here's a few piccies for your enjoyment.

Myself and the wonderful Princess G

Punga Bay Cove

Yay - the SUN!!!

Miss G braving the somewhat chilly waters

The Mosquito

I just read about something on the BBC, and I have to hope that it is some early April fools joke and that they were dedicated enough to put an entry into Wikipedia, cos it's there. Apparently we fabulous Brits have come up with a way to annoy teenagers enough to stop them hanging around places, without effecting anyone over 25. A machine generates a high pitch buzz at 17 Hz, which only those under 25 can hear and it's loud and unpleasant enough to annoy them away from the area. (indeed the company that makes them claims it's unbearable) Apparently they're routinely used in shopping malls. Is this seriously true? If so we are a sick, sick nation.

Is Britain a free country or not? Are people under 25 allowed to stand in a public place, without being discriminated against on the basis of age? Obviously, if they are doing something illegal (although in Britain these days, there's not much which can't be deemed illegal under some fancy new law or other) then they can be removed from the area and dealt with. Now I'll admit, mall rats are kinda pitiful. But does anyone else remember being a teenager? It's dull. Anything you might like to do, you haven't got any money to do. If you're not happy staring at TV or playing computer games, what on Earth are you supposed to do? I spent most Saturday's hanging around our local shopping centre with a couple of mates, and was lucky enough to enjoy the death throes of our funky little local cinema which had cheap tickets just before it got turned into a Tesco's carpark. I didn't do anything illegal. I didn't even annoy anyone (to my knowledge). And I would like to extend the courtesy of a similar experience to today's teenagers. Why do we have to chase them away? What's wrong with letting them have a bit of community? They have a place in our society too.

And remember, any readers with kids/babies - if you're trying to do your shopping and your kids are being complete brats, maybe it's not their fault - maybe you just can't hear the incredibly annoying sound that you're forcing on them unwittingly.

Things I love about New Zealand

My time in New Zealand is finally coming to an end, and I'll be heading home in April. Most of the time I've been here I've been looking forward to coming home, and maybe even looking for negatives. Which are, in fact, only two. The distance from my family and friends, and the lack of suburban pubs. I think this may have been partly to stop myself getting attached to the place. But I recently encountered a nice expression, which has been cause for concern. Boomerang Poms. For much of the 20th century there was actively encouraged immigration from the UK out to Australia, and many of those who arrived initially hated it, hence the term Whinging Poms. They went home, then realised what a winner they'd been onto, so returned to Aussie, becoming Boomerang Poms. I'm beginning to wonder if I might end up falling into this category.
Some things I love about NZ:
Gardens - even your average student flat has a big garden with plenty of room to relax and grow vegetables.
Climate - it gets cold here in winter, but it's almost always sunny. It is a bit excessively windy the whole blimin time though!
Big wide roads - with plenty of room for bikes to cycle past even the most rude and inobservant Fendalton mum's SUV car door.
Cabbage trees, tree ferns, flax and just all the other awesome plants they have both in the wild and in their gardens.
Awesome scenery. Obviously.
The open road - no motorways round here. The main roads are always single lane and have to contend with all of that pesky awesome scenery which makes for winding hilly crazy roads which are a lot of fun to drive (and not so much fun to be a passenger if you get car sick!). On the west coast they even have a couple of quite sizeable bridges which are shared with trains. Problem is that you can't tell if a train's coming until you've got onto the track, and guess who gets right of way?!
And what I love absolute best, and indeed what inspired today's blog - cicadas. Cicadas are just the best thing about summer. On a warm day every tree in Christchurch is alive with the sound of cicadas, which sound like grasshoppers with megaphones. In the UK I used to love the sound of light aircraft buzzing overhead - it was always the sound of a sunny Sunday. Here cicadas give the place a sunny Sunday feeling every day!

Overall, NZ is a great place to live. What would be really handy would be if we could lasso it, and pull it just off the coast of Spain. Seems reasonable huh?!

my budding new career!

Well, I've just embarked on my exciting new career as a biochemist and I'm having initial success! To get the hang of some of the techniques I'll need in my chosen post-doc project, Sean is letting me loose in his lab, isolating an enzyme from bacterial genomic DNA. And below is my first, very impressive DNA gel of my two new genes!

Now I get to put them into cells and get the cells to turn the genes into proteins which I can study. Fun!

Absurd week!

It has been an unbelievably manic week, even though I submitted my thesis on Monday. After that I got a paper (my first first-author paper) accepted, although I had to make loads of changes which have taken me all week. Best thing was it got accepted just before I had to submit a funding application so I got to include it. The funding application had to be submitted last night and after much to-ing and fro-ing of emails and panicked midnight phonecalls to UK finance offices, it was all finished and submitted in time. And then finally, the guy I'm planning to work for has offered me some work from as soon as I get home til I get my own funding - which is fantastic! I won't get funding til at least the end of this year, so being able to get on with something useful and interesting in the meantime is a big bonus. It means that I'm gonna get pretty much no time to say hello to everyone and get over the flight before I have to dart off to Bristol, but hey - at least it's a couple of hours in the train instead of a day in a plane to get home and visit people!

So yeah - it's been mental! I've got a huge pile of things still to be done, but there's been quite a few things ticked off the list this week!

And yes there were three pisco sours (which were still great) and a glass of wine on Monday followed by a slightly slow Tuesday!

All done!!! (Well, sort of)

This afternoon, I submitted my thesis! WAHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! I actually feel a lot less excited than I thought I was gonna feel, probably cos I was always imagining how it would feel whilst having a horrible time in the lab, or whilst stuck in the middle of a difficult bit of the writing. Usually finishing a thesis involves a desperate last-minute dash, not sleeping for the last several nights and handing in just in the nick of time. As it worked out, I managed to get it finished 3 days early (well, that's a lie actually, technically it's 362 days late!) and it was surprisingly close to ready when I gave the first draft to my supervisors, which made this month less stressful. The massive booze-up I'd envisioned, surrounded by all my friends, I can't really be bothered to organise, cos it's a monday so not really a party appropriate night. It's cool though, that'll wait til the weekend and tonight I'm going for pisco sours (I've discovered a bar in town that makes them) and mexican dinner.

Turned into an even better day when Norman passed his warrant of fitness without any work needing to be done. Maybe he just needed the holiday too! My eco-conscious took a bash when the mechanic said that he's getting to be a bit smoky, but he's doing about a million miles a gallon so I don't see how bad it can be. I've seen what they allow here in NZ for smoking, though, and its not pretty. They only take your car off the road if it pumps out smoke continuously for more than 10 seconds - mental. And they claim to be clean and green. One day I'll actually get paid and I'll get a hybrid or summit! In the meantime, I just won't drive much.

Anyway, back to the point - I SUBMITTED MY THESIS!!!!!! All 300 pages of it. I'm sure after the fourth pisco sour it's gonna sink in!

So cute!

We just got back from a weekend away near Akaroa (just an hour from Christchurch, but it feels like its a million miles away) and I thought I'd put up some pictures. We went cos it was my birthday on Friday (I'm now officially in my late twenties!) and Sean had organised for us to go swimming with dolphins. And it was SOOOOOOO much fun! There are hundreds of Hector's dolphins living in Akaroa harbour and they are the worlds smallest and rarest marine dolphin. And they're SO cute! Their markings are really beautiful, with black silver and white - they remind of the McLaren F1 cars when they looked awesome, a few years back. There were loads around us at one point, and they kept flying past us - they're incredibly fast. I had one coming straight towards me and it only diverted at the last minute - I got quite nervous, and I suspect that's what he wanted - they're really playful! Anyway, it was an incredible experience and I've put a couple of photos of it below, plus some others from round Akaroa.

Sun, sand and Christmas!

This year I finally experienced a hot and sunny Christmas by the beach! There was beer, there was bbq and there was sun-burn! We spent two weeks cruising round the north island, seeing a lot of the stuff I still had on my 'to-do-in-NZ' list. We spent 5 days including Christmas on the East Cape, which is a corner of the country which is particularly ignored by tourists and indeed by Kiwis, making it a very pleasant place to spend a relaxing Christmas. The East Cape remains very much a Maori stronghold, and there was a lot of great Maori architecture. In this area the film The Whale Rider was filmed. It has gorgeous beaches, a tropical climate and great scenery, plus friendly people.
Next, we went to the Coromandel for the period between Christmas and new year. What we didn't realise was that for new year the entire of Auckland empties out onto the Coromandel, making it really busy. Was still great though. Then we headed down to Mt Taranaki (or Mt Egmont), which is the second most symmetrical volcano in the world (after Mt Fuji in Japan). We walked a bit of the way up, but didn't climb to the top. Then we headed back down to Wellington, via a short stay in a Yurt (a cool Mongolian version of a tipi, which, it turns out, are quite noisy places to sleep when perched on a hill by the ocean near windy Wellington). We saw Charlie again in Wellington (he came with us for Christmas) and then headed back down to chch. Here's a few photos, with stories, where appropriate.

Christmas day on the beach - and might I add I have IRISH skin - ok?!

An ornately carved marae

Gisborne got hit with a 6.8 earthquake just days before we passed through, and we (plus everyone else in town, it seemed) watched the workers pulling down a big chunk of building, cos part of it had fallen off. The building was too unstable for them to go in, so they had to pull this window/roof off with the curtains still attached!


Pahutakawa tree in full bloom


Mercury Bay


And again.


Cathedral Cove


On the way back from Cathedral Cove


A cool statue of Wairaka, who, according to Maori legend, saved her people from losing their waka (large canoe), with all their belongings after they first landed on the shores of NZ by 'becoming a man' and manoevering the large boat (which girls weren't to handle) single-handedly. Girl power! Those who have seen Once Were Warriors will know that this moment of female emancipation didn't last, but she got an awesome statue at least.


Stormin' Norman proves that he's still stormin' after 270,000 km. Good man!


Here he is again next to Mt Taranaki


Mt Taranaki, the world's second most symmetrical volcano (so I've been told).


I can make no claim to this awesome photo which Sean took of a Tui feeding on the flowers of a flax plant.


Another of Sean's photos of Tui's where you can see their beautiful, but subtle, blue colouring.


This sunset was taken as it set over the sea just north of Wellington on the north island, but as the sun approached the horizon you could see the hills of the south island (Abel Tasman region) silhouetted.

The drive home.