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.

Back from the wild

We're back from the wilds of the Routeburn track, freshly showered and all stinky clothes washed! The Routeburn track is a three-day hike in fiordland. We had pouring rain for the first day and showers all the second day, so our packs (as well as ourselves!) were completely sodden. It was a beautiful walk, even in the rain, because when it rains on the west coast, BOY does it rain, and thousands of waterfalls, creeks and raging rivers come down the mountains. Makes it very pretty, even if you do get wet feet! The third day was sunny though, and we had some great views. Here's a few photos.

For perspective, that speck on the edge of the next ridge was another tramper

Lake MacKenzie

Hollyford valley

To celebrate nearly being off on some holidays (finally!) I thought I'd spring clean the site and put a new title photo on. It was taken on the Hump Ridge track a few years back and seemed appropriate since I'll be off doing some more tramping for the first week of our trip. We're doing the Routeburn which is a three day tramp down in fiordland, in the south-west corner off the country. Then its off on a road-trip of the north island. So hopefully in the coming weeks I'll have lots of new photos.

I finished my introduction last Friday (it took just 6 days!) and got a compliment on my writing from my supervisor, so there were cocktails on Friday night! Had a margarita and a very tasty pisco sour. I haven't had a pisco sour since we were in Pisco (Peru), and it was just as nice as I remember it. I'd left two weeks for the introduction, so I now have all this week to tidy the thesis up and get some of the stuff done I didn't think I'd be able to. I love when a plan comes together!

Paradigm free thesis!

That's right, my friends, I've managed to write most of my thesis, and critically, half the introduction and I've managed to avoid the word paradigm completely! It's been touch and go at times, and its still early introduction days, but I'm very proud of myself! I don't know why I find it such an offensive word in the literature (and even more so when used in talks) but I do. I really do. It's an awful word. Should be banned. I have to admit to having to use ridiculously pompous language, but as long as the p word isn't in there, I'm happy.

In other news, my supervisors are now officially scientific rock-stars! They won two research prizes this week, including one very prestigious international one! Most readers will think I'm very sad, but as a chemist I get quite star-struck by top organic chemists (handing a microphone to Amos B Smith the third at a conference this year will count as a highlight in my life!) and I'm increasingly aware of what an honour it is to work with my supervisors, even if I am in a different field to their specialty.

And in related news, I'm still writing, but it's getting there now. Not crazy yet and it's almost looking like I might get away without any serious mental scars. We submitted my first first-author paper to a peer-reviewed journal last week, which is very exciting. Fingers crossed. It takes a while to go through the peer review process, but I'm really hoping it'll be accepted by next January so that I can be gainfully employed on my return to the mothership.

No other news. Hope ya'll are well.

What can you say?!

Yet more reasons why we don't need to have the government creating huge cross-referencing databases of information on us. They lost all the data (including bank details and national insurance numbers) of every person with a child in the UK cos they send it by CD via an external courier company. If they can't even get CDs right, how on earth do they think they can keep safe our data on a 'secure' network which can be accessed by hundreds of thousands across the nation and no doubt will be hacked within 5 minutes of being operational?

I'm so embaressed by our 'great' britain. If our big brother nation wants more of our freedoms in return for 'security' they should probably start proving they can be trusted with our security.

We must be loved!

THREE birds in one night!! That's how much our cats love us! All neatly lying at our back door. I'm starting to think they know they're gonna get given away and that they're trying to convince us to keep them. I really wish we could.

Careful what you wish for!

(Un)fortunately the people who were supposed to be taking our adorable little bundles of fur now can't take them any more, so we're back to square one! So be careful what you wish for. Whilst I didn't wanna give them away, now we still have to give them away and we don't have a happy home for them to go to!

In other news, the writing is still going on. I haven't gone mad yet, but it's only a matter of time.

And does anyone else think the French are dumb?! They vote a man in to reform the country and then when he gets started, the whole nation goes out in the streets to protest! THEN DON'T VOTE FOR REFORMISTS, DUMMIES!!! I don't get why all the public servants want to help the train drivers retire more than ten years earlier than them anyway - I can't imagine the job of a train driver is harder than that of a high school teacher. I think they take the fraternite bit a little too seriously! Oh well, I guess French politics (of which I only know what the BBC and Al Jazeera tells me) is not really something I should be getting into. I'll get myself in trouble with certain readers!

Back to the writing with you, girl. Hope ya'll are well.

Furry friends

(Un)Fortunately we've managed to find a new home for our little cuties. The parents of a friend will take them both, and it'll be great cos it sounds like they're really excited to get them, plus they live on a farm so the cats will be able to get up to all sorts of exploring and killing! Only problem is - I DON'T WANNA GIVE EM AWAY!!! We know we have to though (not fair to take them on a 28 hour flight when we don't even know where we're moving to), so I've been taking lots of pictures. It's been a while since I subjected you to pictures of the wee fellas, so tough - you're getting more!

Snoozin. Now's the moment for that fart, Grey!

I guess this means it's time to mow the lawn then?

You kill, I'll supervise.

Story catch-up continues

One of the other exciting new things I've done recently is learn to ride a road-bike. Sounds easy given I've been riding a mountain bike for years, but I've always been a bit nervous of road-bikes. But a month or so ago there was a police bike auction and so me and Sean picked up a bike each for 20 bucks (about 8 pounds)! Mine needed a few bits replaced, but I am now happily screaming round Christchurch on my new ten-speed! I don't think I'm much faster (much to my disappointment and Sean's relief) but I'm definately quieter. A couple of photos of the new noble stead below with Grey checking out the new addition.



And this weekend it was a gorgeous day on Sunday - beach weather, so we went to the beach! Christchurch is on the coast but New Brighton is boring to look at and windy, and Sumner is always packed if it's a nice day, so we went to a beach I've never been to before called Taylors Mistake. It's a small and sheltered bay with lovely sand and walks on the surrounding hills. So we had a lovely chilled Sunday at the beach. No ice-cream man there though - gotta plan ahead better next time!