So I've been back home for a week, and spent most of it catching up on things that happened while I was away. The trip was really good: the experiments went well, the workshop was worthwhile, and visiting Perth was great.
Badminton has been a bit frustrating; the team was up north this weekend for the playoffs. Our coach had said before I went away that it was likely that I would be needed, but then last weekend at our final training session it turned out not to be. Oh well - there's always next year. And also there's the trip to Hobart for a tournament there, although lately I haven't been looking forward to that as much as I was.
Work-wise, things are going well and I have a lot to do - two book chapters to write, half a dozen papers, endless data analysis... This week the beam time schedule at the Australian Synchrotron should be sent out, so hopefully I'll be able to plan things for the rest of the year soon.
And for something different, we're having a church quiz night on 3 September. Should be fun :)
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Jetting off again
Yay! Two weeks away from my computer, off to Aussie for some more experiments. These ones aren't too exciting; two days of measuring sample after sample. The first is helping some new users from Victoria University (Wellington) look at nanoparticles coated on plastics; the second is part of some ongoing work with our collaborators at Cambridge University (UK) looking at fuel cell catalyst materials.
These finish on Thursday, and the following Thursday and Friday there's a workshop on at Melbourne Uni that would be really useful for me to go to. It's about a new X-ray scattering technique that would help a lot of the projects I'm working on. But work was loathe to pay for accommodation for me in between, almost as loathe as they were for me to come back and fly across a second time. So I'm taking a week of annual leave to visit a friend in Perth. It'll be my first time there and also our first time actually meeting in person (we 'met' on the Chuck Missler internet message boards about 7 or 8 years ago). I'm excited and I know she is too! Now I just need to figure out what clothes to pack...
These finish on Thursday, and the following Thursday and Friday there's a workshop on at Melbourne Uni that would be really useful for me to go to. It's about a new X-ray scattering technique that would help a lot of the projects I'm working on. But work was loathe to pay for accommodation for me in between, almost as loathe as they were for me to come back and fly across a second time. So I'm taking a week of annual leave to visit a friend in Perth. It'll be my first time there and also our first time actually meeting in person (we 'met' on the Chuck Missler internet message boards about 7 or 8 years ago). I'm excited and I know she is too! Now I just need to figure out what clothes to pack...
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Getting on with things
Things are still plugging along, another week gone so quickly. Last week I had a few days off with a bad cold; this week on Thursday it felt like Tuesday.
Work has been going well and I'm starting to feel like I'm on top of things despite having ten things all going at once. We received word of the success of our funding bid, unfortunately the $$ amount is about half what we applied for, so we're having to cut back on some of the proposed activities. In other news, there are a couple of other things that I'm applying for: the Prime Minister's emerging scientist prize and a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship. The former consists of three rounds; I was successful in the first round which means I now have to submit a poster and either a 90-second video or a 500-word essay about my research, aimed at a secondary school audience. We filmed the various bits and pieces for the video this week, so that was something a bit different!
Today our badminton rep team has another tie, at Wellington North. Although there are a number of people who have hardly been at Sunday night training at all over the last few months, they are all available for the tie... needless to say, the trip to Feilding made for a really long and frustrating day, so I'm not going today. Besides, I need to make something for church pot-luck lunch tomorrow. And the rugby's on tonight. Those are my excuses and I'm sticking to them.
In other news, Al and Vicky tied the knot a couple of weeks ago, so big congratulations to them. The weather was good (if a little cold; but it is July, after all) and it was neat just having an intimate family affair.
Work has been going well and I'm starting to feel like I'm on top of things despite having ten things all going at once. We received word of the success of our funding bid, unfortunately the $$ amount is about half what we applied for, so we're having to cut back on some of the proposed activities. In other news, there are a couple of other things that I'm applying for: the Prime Minister's emerging scientist prize and a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship. The former consists of three rounds; I was successful in the first round which means I now have to submit a poster and either a 90-second video or a 500-word essay about my research, aimed at a secondary school audience. We filmed the various bits and pieces for the video this week, so that was something a bit different!
Today our badminton rep team has another tie, at Wellington North. Although there are a number of people who have hardly been at Sunday night training at all over the last few months, they are all available for the tie... needless to say, the trip to Feilding made for a really long and frustrating day, so I'm not going today. Besides, I need to make something for church pot-luck lunch tomorrow. And the rugby's on tonight. Those are my excuses and I'm sticking to them.
In other news, Al and Vicky tied the knot a couple of weeks ago, so big congratulations to them. The weather was good (if a little cold; but it is July, after all) and it was neat just having an intimate family affair.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
De-facebooking, and other stuff
So it's been about three weeks since I last posted anything here, mainly because not a lot has happened - no overseas trips, no disasters or emergencies; things have just been muddling along. And for some reason this has given me a real case of the blues. Things are a bit better this week, but last week was just awful - not because anything bad happened, but for whatever reason the joy just went out of my life for a while. I asked for prayer at church last Sunday and things have been much better since. Perhaps it's because the wintery weather has been really miserable this year; perhaps because I haven't had as much time as I need to spend in Bible study (badminton three nights a week doesn't help there); perhaps because of spiritual attack. It's not out of the question...
Anyway as part of getting out of the rut and back into the groove (haha, get it?) I was convicted by the Holy Spirit to stop spending time on Facebook. There had been a few incidents lately that left me less than impressed with some of my 'friends', and writing something on someone's status and then have somebody who I don't know write on it and say what I'd said was 'a load of cr*p', was pretty much the final straw.
As some of you will know, I was a bit reluctant to sign up for facebook in the first place. About a year ago I noted on this blog how it was concerning me how much time I was spending there. So things kind of came to a head last week, and I figured, I can do without it, my real friends know how to contact me outside of facebook, and after all it's more healthy to have real relationships rather than online ones.
What a relief it has been, although deleting a facebook account is really not easy - I did my best though; deleting as many of my posts as I could be bothered to, deleting all my photos, deleting all my 'interests' and other biographical info, then finally disconnecting all the people I was connected to and clicking that 'Deactivate account'. Woo!
(This isn't the button, by the way; I just made it up - but imagine if it was...)
Anyway as part of getting out of the rut and back into the groove (haha, get it?) I was convicted by the Holy Spirit to stop spending time on Facebook. There had been a few incidents lately that left me less than impressed with some of my 'friends', and writing something on someone's status and then have somebody who I don't know write on it and say what I'd said was 'a load of cr*p', was pretty much the final straw.
As some of you will know, I was a bit reluctant to sign up for facebook in the first place. About a year ago I noted on this blog how it was concerning me how much time I was spending there. So things kind of came to a head last week, and I figured, I can do without it, my real friends know how to contact me outside of facebook, and after all it's more healthy to have real relationships rather than online ones.
What a relief it has been, although deleting a facebook account is really not easy - I did my best though; deleting as many of my posts as I could be bothered to, deleting all my photos, deleting all my 'interests' and other biographical info, then finally disconnecting all the people I was connected to and clicking that 'Deactivate account'. Woo!
(This isn't the button, by the way; I just made it up - but imagine if it was...)
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
On the eve of 30
Significant birthdays are time to reflect, on the past, the present, and the future. This time five years ago, I had just moved to London for my post-doc. This time ten years ago, I was probably sitting 3rd year undergraduate exams. This time fifteen years ago, again probably mock exams for School C. This time twenty years ago, our family had just got back from our trip to Disneyland. And this time thirty years ago, it was the day before my mother gave birth to her first child.
This time next year, and this time in five years, ten years - I don't know what will have happened. But it's comforting to know that God already knows; and more than that - that He has planned it all.
In the meantime I am looking forward to this weekend. Since my 21st was a family-only affair, I asked Mum if she would mind organising something for my 30th. One thing led to another, and within a short space of time we'd decided that she would organise a car rally and I would invite whoever I wanted. With people from work, church, and home group, there's about fifty people who've said they are coming. The weather forecast is looking good (as good as can be expected for June) so I'm hoping everyone will have fun.
30 is a significant age in the Bible as well. It's the age at which priests began to serve in the ministry (Num. 4:3 etc.), the age at which Joseph became prime minister of Egypt under Pharaoh (Gen. 41:46), the age at which Saul became king (1 Sam. 13:1), and David also (2 Sam. 5:4), and of course the age at which Jesus began His public ministry (Luke 3:23). Will this be a defining year for me as well? I hope so. Food for thought.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Winter is here
So it's that time of year again - short days, cold days, wet days, snuggle up in front of the TV days. Despite all of that things are going reasonably well at the moment. I don't have any trips planned for a while; at work I have two rather huge mountains of data to analyse which is a bit overwhelming at times but I am running out of other things to do in procrastination.
In other news, it looked like I was about to inherit a cat from my next-door-neighbour, who agreed to look after it for someone for 'a couple of weeks'. Nearly two months later she'd had enough, and although it was a really nice-looking and affectionate cat, I thought with the amount of travel I have to do at times, it wouldn't be fair to the poor thing for me to take it in. Fortunately Stu and Nicola were thinking of getting one, so last weekend they came by to pick it up. I hope it's able to settle in quickly as it sounds like the first few days were a bit frustrating for them. Nothing out of the ordinary though: cat won't eat, hides under the bed most of the day, etc. It'll take a few weeks to adjust - I just hope they'll stick it out.
Our first badminton reps tie is at Feilding this Saturday. I'll be going up even though I'm only the reserve and have no guarantee of playing, but there's a bug going around the team so you never know. Interclub is going well too, although none of my team mates have given me any money for the shuttles yet.
Finally winter also means it'll be my birthday soon... and since this year is a significant one, I've invited a bunch of people from church and from work (should be an interesting combo there) and asked Mum to organise something...
In other news, it looked like I was about to inherit a cat from my next-door-neighbour, who agreed to look after it for someone for 'a couple of weeks'. Nearly two months later she'd had enough, and although it was a really nice-looking and affectionate cat, I thought with the amount of travel I have to do at times, it wouldn't be fair to the poor thing for me to take it in. Fortunately Stu and Nicola were thinking of getting one, so last weekend they came by to pick it up. I hope it's able to settle in quickly as it sounds like the first few days were a bit frustrating for them. Nothing out of the ordinary though: cat won't eat, hides under the bed most of the day, etc. It'll take a few weeks to adjust - I just hope they'll stick it out.
Our first badminton reps tie is at Feilding this Saturday. I'll be going up even though I'm only the reserve and have no guarantee of playing, but there's a bug going around the team so you never know. Interclub is going well too, although none of my team mates have given me any money for the shuttles yet.
Finally winter also means it'll be my birthday soon... and since this year is a significant one, I've invited a bunch of people from church and from work (should be an interesting combo there) and asked Mum to organise something...
Friday, April 30, 2010
Badminton etc.
April means (at least in NZ) getting cold, dark, rainy - and badminton season. This year I was really looking forward to being in the Hutt Valley reps again, but unfortunately they did the grading during one of my trips away (the NY/Melbourne one, I think). So this year I'm a reserve.
While I'm naturally disappointed, I'm also trying to look on the bright side: I can still go to training and improve my game, and it won't cost as much. Opportunities to practise singles are few and far between. And I'm not hoping that someone injures themselves, but if they did then I'd get to play in the ties.
On work-related matters, I'm in paper-writing mode at the moment. We have one on the iron carbonate scale formation (experiments done in Melbourne last July) that has come back from the reviewers requiring revision, then another on a computer program I started writing in 2005, and finally a third on some experiments we did at Stanford in January 2009.
While I'm naturally disappointed, I'm also trying to look on the bright side: I can still go to training and improve my game, and it won't cost as much. Opportunities to practise singles are few and far between. And I'm not hoping that someone injures themselves, but if they did then I'd get to play in the ties.
On work-related matters, I'm in paper-writing mode at the moment. We have one on the iron carbonate scale formation (experiments done in Melbourne last July) that has come back from the reviewers requiring revision, then another on a computer program I started writing in 2005, and finally a third on some experiments we did at Stanford in January 2009.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
100 km
Last weekend was the Oxfam Trailwalker - a challenge to walk 100 km in under 36 hours.
Here's us at the start line at 6 am on Saturday morning.
We had two goals: first, to get all four members over the finish line, 100 km later. Second, to do it in a quicker time than the two members who finished last year.
This was no mean feat (no pun intended), and it definitely helped having an awesome support crew. As some of you will know, I was on the support crew last year and watching Christina and Marama cross the finish line was what drove me to have a go this year.
The first leg was the most crowded, which stands to reason since 600 people passing the start line within a minute or so of each other is going to result in a big bunch-up. It was foggy but not too cold, as we made our way up the bank of the Waikato River, across the bridge at Huka Falls, and through Craters of the Moon to checkpoint 1. Leg 2 was along some back roads through the scoria quarry and through pine forest to the Girl Guide camp. Leg 3 through native bush along the W2K track to Kinloch, at which point my right knee was starting to complain. We began leg 4, the longest at 19 km, about an hour before sunset and once it was dark we found ourselves very much on our own. Following the trail in the dark was not too difficult at first, but as the track moved from bush into farmland the markers got further and further apart and we had to spread out a bit to find them again. Legs 5, 6 and 7 were all in the dark, crossing the river and more farmland. Sometime during the night my left knee decided it had had enough too. But that's what strapping tape is for. We began the final 13 km leg just as dawn was breaking. Following the new Taupo bypass road and then cutting under State Highway 1, then the final push along the lakefront back into town to the finish line.
As you can see we achieved both our goals: all four members made it to the finish line, and in 27:51 - beating last year's time of 29:30.
It was an experience; I'm not sure yet if I'm 'glad' I did it - I guess it's just one of those things you challenge yourself with. And one that for me, is certainly 'been there, done that' (i.e. not doing it again).
Here's us at the start line at 6 am on Saturday morning.
We had two goals: first, to get all four members over the finish line, 100 km later. Second, to do it in a quicker time than the two members who finished last year.
This was no mean feat (no pun intended), and it definitely helped having an awesome support crew. As some of you will know, I was on the support crew last year and watching Christina and Marama cross the finish line was what drove me to have a go this year.
The first leg was the most crowded, which stands to reason since 600 people passing the start line within a minute or so of each other is going to result in a big bunch-up. It was foggy but not too cold, as we made our way up the bank of the Waikato River, across the bridge at Huka Falls, and through Craters of the Moon to checkpoint 1. Leg 2 was along some back roads through the scoria quarry and through pine forest to the Girl Guide camp. Leg 3 through native bush along the W2K track to Kinloch, at which point my right knee was starting to complain. We began leg 4, the longest at 19 km, about an hour before sunset and once it was dark we found ourselves very much on our own. Following the trail in the dark was not too difficult at first, but as the track moved from bush into farmland the markers got further and further apart and we had to spread out a bit to find them again. Legs 5, 6 and 7 were all in the dark, crossing the river and more farmland. Sometime during the night my left knee decided it had had enough too. But that's what strapping tape is for. We began the final 13 km leg just as dawn was breaking. Following the new Taupo bypass road and then cutting under State Highway 1, then the final push along the lakefront back into town to the finish line.
As you can see we achieved both our goals: all four members made it to the finish line, and in 27:51 - beating last year's time of 29:30.
It was an experience; I'm not sure yet if I'm 'glad' I did it - I guess it's just one of those things you challenge yourself with. And one that for me, is certainly 'been there, done that' (i.e. not doing it again).
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Post-Easter
Just a quick catch-up on the events of the last couple of weeks.
The experiments in Melbourne went really well, despite only getting about 20 hours' sleep in 5 days. I used my two complimentary long-haul upgrades to travel business class from San Francisco to Auckland, and let me tell you, it was worth it. Also managed to catch up with my good friends Paul and Marge and spend an evening with them before the experiments started.
Easter I spent at home. Mum and I went to a Good Friday service at a small local Anglican church that was a bit dire, and Easter Sunday service at Knox. I might try there again on Sundays after Trailwalker, and see how things go. It helps that I already know a few people there.
The next big thing however is Trailwalker. Four days to go. I don't know if I'm ready for it, but it's a bit too late now! I'll let you know how I get on in my next blog entry... and that website again if you want to sponsor us is right here.
The experiments in Melbourne went really well, despite only getting about 20 hours' sleep in 5 days. I used my two complimentary long-haul upgrades to travel business class from San Francisco to Auckland, and let me tell you, it was worth it. Also managed to catch up with my good friends Paul and Marge and spend an evening with them before the experiments started.
Easter I spent at home. Mum and I went to a Good Friday service at a small local Anglican church that was a bit dire, and Easter Sunday service at Knox. I might try there again on Sundays after Trailwalker, and see how things go. It helps that I already know a few people there.
The next big thing however is Trailwalker. Four days to go. I don't know if I'm ready for it, but it's a bit too late now! I'll let you know how I get on in my next blog entry... and that website again if you want to sponsor us is right here.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
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!
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!
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