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!