300

I don't know if you know this, but today (27 October) is the 300th day of the year.

300 days since I started my devotional blog: The Honest Truth - where I'm taking one Bible verse a day and writing a short piece about what it means, or why I like it.

Hobart

I have one more day and two more nights in Hobart. The town actually reminds me quite a lot of Dunedin in a weird sort of way... quite hilly, cold, laid back culture, etc. (Sydney = Auckland, Melbourne = Wellington, Adelaide = Christchurch. Perth = Tauranga?)

There was snow on Mt Wellington on the first couple of days we were here, and with temperatures around 11-12 degrees (Celsius) we realised we hadn't packed enough warm clothes. But here we are at the end of the week and it's 25 degrees - shorts and T-shirts...

The badminton games have been reasonably good, but all the socialising has grated on me a bit. Particularly the relationships between me, the people in my unit, and the people next door. Anyway I'm trying not to dwell on that.
Then everyone is saying, 'See you again next year', and I'm thinking to myself, 'No you won't!' None of this has really been my cup of tea. Being a midweek ladies' tournament, the average age of the participants is probably around 55-60. But despite this, the mid-week dinner we had consisted of food, then music almost as loud as the conference dinner at ICONN earlier this year. I simply could not stay - and I don't know how the old people coped, but they were all up the front dancing... seems that they all see it as a time to get away from their families and let their hair down. I can't really relate to that. I guess I just haven't fitted in to anything. Was I expecting to? Probably not. Am I bothered? Not now. I had a good time by myself yesterday - had the afternoon off after playing early in the morning, so I hired a mountain bike and went for a ride up Mt Wellington. I made it as far as the chalet (about 3 km from the top), decided that was far enough so I turned around and rode down - biggest adrenaline rush I've had for a while :)
Tomorrow I'm going on a tour to Richmond, Port Arthur, and a Tasmanian devil sanctuary place. By myself (i.e. not with the people from my unit). Then on Sunday it'll be time to go home - and not a day too soon. I am so over all of this. It's just like school really - girls all giggly and stupid, gossipy and backstabbing. No, I won't be going to another ladies' badminton jamboree thing.

I haven't got around to downloading the photos off my camera (for both the Queen Charlotte trip and Hobart) but as soon as I do I'll put them up here...

Queen Charlotte, here we come

Tomorrow, early, a bunch of us from work are taking the ferry down to the Marlborough Sounds, ultimately for our annual nanoparticle meeting between the research groups at IRL, Vic, and Canterbury. There are 14 of us who are getting to the venue (the Portage) via the Queen Charlotte walkway. I'm looking forward to it, even though 14 could be quite a big group and the weather is meant to be showery. Anyway the walking should take us 2 1/2 days, then the meeting is 2 days including a quiz on Monday night, which I'm also looking forward to... So here's hoping for smooth sailing on the ferry (definitely not my strong point) and that I'm able to exercise some patience and longsuffering with people in the group whom I'm expecting might get on my nerves from time to time!

Photos to follow...

When you just want to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I have 4 hours of beamtime left on these experiments - looking for evidence of iron carbonate precipitation in solution. We think we have seen it, which is great, but it has come at a cost.

You see, normally when we've run these experiments in the past we've had 4 people to cover the shifts 24 hrs a day - two electrochemists and two synchrotron people. This time, we had 4 people lined up, but then when the dates were scheduled, two of them couldn't make it. So it's just been me and one other person, and because both our expertise is needed for each experiment, it means we've not been able to get much sleep over the last 2 days.

So yeah, it's been a productive trip and good preliminary work for future experiments, but very, very tiring!