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.