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!