In transit

So I made the mistake on my trip to NY of watching the new George Clooney movie, 'Up in the Air'. Really, they should not show it on planes. How depressing - a life of transit lounges, waiting, security checkpoints, one hotel room after another, meeting people whom you'll probably never see again. While I'm not a business(wo)man, sometimes my life does resemble the tediousness of travel. It's at this point I have to remind myself that not many people get the opportunities I have been given to travel, and that there's more joy in the destination than the journey itself (thinking of long-haul flights here).

Anyway the experiments in NY worked really well; the samples were much more stable, reproducible, and generally better behaved than when we attempted these experiments nearly 2 years ago. There were 5 of us working which made the shift work a little bit easier, but still the days were long. Now comes the task of analysing the data, but the students should be able to do most of that themselves with a little guidance. Hopefully this won't be too difficult - they are in the UK.

I'm now on my way to Melbourne for the next round of carbon dioxide corrosion of steel experiments. We performed the first ones of these in July last year and are about to submit a paper on that work.

All in all things are quite intense at the moment, and I can't afford to slow down just yet. Better to stay in a state of sleep-deprivation than to let the fallout hit me just yet!

March madness

So it's been a few weeks since I updated this blog; sorry about that - there's been a lot happening.

So I got back from a very successful trip to Stanford and visiting my friend Alison; that was followed by a not-so-inspiring trip to Sydney for a nanotech conference. I don't know quite what it is, but nothing there really seemed to inspire me. Perhaps it was the fact I'd been living out of a suitcase, and the only time I got to spend at home was all used up on Trailwalker training walks.

Anyhow, that saw February out the door, at which point I spent a week and a bit hosting a colleague from Stanford. We met with some people re: science stuff and then took a few days to head up to Taupo to do the Tongariro Northern Circuit (one of the Great Walks). It was fantastic - there's no other word. We had a day in Taupo afterwards to relax a bit, then he took the bus to Auckland and I drove back home. Now I have one more day at work, before heading off to New York on Monday, spending a week there and then heading directly to Melbourne. Both trips for yet more experiments - and yes, I am looking forward to them.

When I get back it'll be Easter and then the following week is Trailwalker. It has come up really fast and it's kind of scary to think that it's less than a month away. Life is being measured in weeks again. But sometimes that's the only way to make things manageable!


View over Mt Tongariro from the top of Mt Ngauruhoe. As you can see, the weather was perfect.