Sigh

So after waiting two months for my supervisor to bother reading a draft I got it back. And he hates it. I told P1 a while ago that the worst thing you can get back is something with almost no comments on it because it means that it’s beyond saving. I changed my mind. Worse than that is something with a solid column of red down one side which is a combination of chunks being deleted and comments such as ‘what is the point of this? why did you even do this study?’

Not to mention when he got too annoyed with doing that and started leaving comments like ‘this paragraph doesn’t fit. Delete.’ and then ‘read comments for above paragraph’

Which wouldn’t be all that bad – I mean at least I know where I’m going wrong (answer, pretty much everywhere) except that I’ve been waiting so long I actually had another draft ready to go and a third one almost there.

I’m just glad that the flu made me lazy and I didn’t get much done for the last week because I was too tire. Everything else from the last 8 weeks has just been deleted and started over.

And I pay R16000 a year for this?

If it wasn’t for the gaping 5 year hole in my CV I’d be halfway to Sweden by now. Either way I’d always expected the next time I cried myself to sleep to be over boy trouble or friend drama. I expected wrong.

Oh well. Back to work.

Yip, I’m 12

So there was groot drama over the weekend and it upset me. It upset me to a point where running made me angry rather than calming me down (I use running to think things through, and I kept reaching the angry conclusions). The only things that really helped were tai chi (to a point where I refused to leave after one of the lessons) and ice-skating.

I’d forgotten how much ice-skating cleared my head. At one stage I used to go quite often during the week and just skate until my problems were gone. We went on Wednesday and as it happened people either forgot or couldn’t get hold of me or changed their minds and it was just two of us, so I had a blast seeing how fast I could go and getting a random ice-hockey player to try and teach me hockey-stops.

That said, it all came to an end when I got a message at 4am to tell me that I was no longer welcome as a friend to a certain person. I got it this morning and I was so angry I sent them an epic-long angry sms and unfriended them on facebook.

Which made the making-up process kind of tricky…

Realisations

Sorry for yet another miserable post. Here goes:

My project has been crashing and burning in the last few weeks. the thing is, I probably have enough for a PhD at the moment, but not a good one, not an interesting one and the novel cool stuff I've been waiting to do is currently hitting a brick wall (the experiment is, I'm not planning on throwing lizards around in construction sites).

basically I've been organised and had everything planned, and now at the 11th hour I have been let down y pretty much every single person who had promised to help me. I'm talking "Sorry, this person spent all your research money, you can't order anything right now!" to 'Oh dear, this chemical costs R5000 per milligram and I seem to have lost the bottle! Don't worry, I know you need it this week, but it only takes 6-8 weeks to deliver if you order it now!" kind of let down.

So last night I lay awake trying to make a Plan C (A and B crashed and burned already) I began to feel the panic attacks as they came and went and I might have sobbed into my pillow a little bit more than I'll admit to. Add on that I'm exhausted and can't sleep and this level of panic makes me nauseous which doesn't help and I'm hitting hay-fever season so I have a cough and a runny nose and a sore throat... I made a plan and lay in bed on Google (I love having mini-google on my phone) researching the possibilities while trying to ignore the fact that tai chi has become really difficult and I'm not looking forward to it and the people I would usually go to for advice on this (i.e. my mentor, an older PhD student who knows her way around these things and Luke) are all off overseas and I felt REALLY alone...

When I realised a few things:

1. I shouldn't have this much responsibility. While I've always been very independent, being totally alone at this level is ridiculous and I don't know why I put up with it.
2. I need a supervisor. I need someone to help me and tell me what to do. I can't keep on doing everything by myself. It's just making me sick.
3. If it doesn't work out, I'm still 24, as much as I want to finish next year, the world won't end if I don't.
4. I can always do fieldwork later the lizards are active until March-April at least.
5. Breathe in, breathe out. Breath in... breathe out...

So at 3am I got myself up, found a scary price-list for everything that I need and sent it to myself so I could handle it today, sent an email to my superV demanding a meeting and managed to get a few hours of sleep.

So maybe there's hope... either way I can sort of breathe again, as long as I think calm thoughts every few minutes!

shoes and guilt

First things first: the people in our lab eat popcorn almost every day. We love it and there's a place on campus that sells it relatively cheaply aand they make it really well as long as you don't look very closely at the oil... So when I was getting quotes for a coffee machine I got one for a popcorn maker as well (an air-popper not needing oil and all that nasty stuff) but we decided against it. Then I saw it on special for next to nothing on the weekend, Leia is super-keen to chip in and get it, Luke not so much...

As the deciding vote I can't make up my mind (no pun intended) so I have put up a poll (top right hand side of this page). Please vote and help me on this! It's not as arduous as commenting (although you are more than welcome to eplain your choice) and is totally naonymous so all you lurker out there are welcome to click a button and make your voice heard, but not identified!

Ok, so to the point of today's post... I got new shoes, and NO I don't feel guilty because they were on sale and therefore better-than-reasonably priced! I actually picked a different pair and was already at the checkout when I saw the shoes that I REALLY wanted, and the long-suffering salesman let me try them on. And what are the chances that the only pair left fitted me?




This is them:

Aren't they awesome? They come with a choice of black and pink laces, so I went with the pink, which make people visibly recoil at their brightness, but I don't really care, I like them! The best part is that I don't have to lace them up, and the padding which makes them super-comfy also makes them really nice and warm! And they match my pink paper-clip earrings!

So the guilt? well today I worked at the vet and from there went to the centre where I used to work to return DVDs that I hadn't got around to watching yet. I figured as I was going to go straight to the lab I'd get spinach and feta pie while I was at it and of course I walked past the hairdresser that I used to go to.

I moved from them to my friend's husband's sister's husband's aunt instead as she's much cheaper and really good and she works from home which is conveniently near to where my friend lives and so she used to come and keep my company while I got my hair done. She was also awesome enough to dye my hair blue and organise blue extensions when that didn't work!

Unfortunately since my last haircut, my friend divorced her husband, which made his family really angry and makes me scared to have Renee anywhere near my head with a pair of scissors. but as it's been a good six months since my last haircut and I'm in desperate need of one I figured I'd make an appointment considering that I'm working less than a kilometre away this week. Renee thinned my hair a lot last time so I've been able to have it loose, but lately that's grown out and it's too thick to do anything, even if I straighten it. and all the layering and stuff has mostly grown out which means it's just...everywhere!

So anyway, back to the guilt, i was on my way to the highway when I saw a woman sitting at the side of the road. She wasn't begging, she was just kind of sitting there. She held a blanket that might ave contained a baby, but I think was actually just strategic padding (I hope so anyway) and just sat, in the sun which was pretty warm right then.

I never give money to beggars, but I often keep food in my car that i hand out, or clothes or something. I've heard the stories of begging being more lucrative than working and all that but at the same time I worry that they're usually told by people who have jobs. At the moment there is NOTHING available, even the government-run companies aren't hiring people (despite dear Jacob promising 500 000 new jobs) and lucrative or not, to cast off your dignity and sit at the side of the road has to be totally soul-destroying. I don't often give stuff away, but I try to make eye contact and say hi and apologise, and just treat people like humans rather than pretending that they don't exist while revving to try and make the light change faster.

but today i didn't have anything, so I figured who was I to have made an expensive hair appointment while this woman was sitting there with nothing. The robot (traffic light) was red so I sat there for a while, until I decided that she could probably get more from my pie than I would and so I opened my window and offered it to her. It was still warm and she seemed really grateful and the light was about to change so I said it was a pleasure and to have a really good day and she went back to her seat.

As I changed to first gear I saw her settle back with bit more gusto than I'd expected, to see that she'd FALLEN down a hole that had obviously been dug to change cables or something for the robot! There was the plastic orange mesh stuff around the perimeter and I think she was using it for shade and it ad given way or something and she literally fell in backwards, head first!

The robot was green and people were hooting and I must admit my first thoughts were of whether I could leave my car, bearing in mind that my laptop was in the boot and that was probably a bad idea as I hadn't backed up this morning's work... so I waited until she stood up and waved that she was okay (although she seemed somewhat wobbly) and I had to go.

I can't believe it happened! And maybe if I hadn't tried to give her a pie she wouldn't have hurt herself!

I mean really, what are the chances of that happening?

And yes, I just wrote a post about homeess people and shoes. I am officially shallow.

I should research this!

So someting happeed last week in that I did bundles of landry and nothing came out the other end... To be honest, my participation ended at putthing clothes in the washing machine and hitting the start button. I'm very good at doing laundry strategically when I'm either about to go out or just before Gertrude, the super-awesome maid arrives (she hides things and tends to put clean cothes in the wash while folding up dirty clothes back in my cupboard, but she's totally awesome! plus she spends two days a week at my hous so I don't have to worry about my dogs being lonely. I think in a life or death situation Max would totally rescue her first!)

So anyway for the last few days I've been battling to find anything to wear. Finally in frustraton I went through my cupboards last night to discover that it is a lot neater than usual bcasue half my stuf fis gone. More specifically the pants that went into the wash have not re-emerged. I ended up wering a skirt yesterday (horrors), going to gym in my pyjamas (ok, that's normal) and now I'm walking around in cargo pants I found in the back of the cupboard that I haven't worn since high school. They not too bad except they have a million pockets and I keep losing things and then i have to hunt through all of the pockets and zip-compartments and velcroed sub-pockets within pockets until I forget what i was looking for in the first place.

I hope that my clothes do their usual trick of being missing for a week or so and then reappearing just in time for me to avoid going to university in my swimming costume, fluffy slippers and a bathrobe out of desperation. but the fact remains: where the heck do these things go? I don't mind occasionally losing a sock or a shoelace or a glove, but all my jeans and about 3 pairs of gym pants in one fell swoop? That's one hungry washing machine!

Any ideas on where they might be? Has anyone else had an experience like this before? It makes me feel kind of violated and alone...

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

The cheesy title is an attempt on my part to get a boy-band song out of my head... I found these old mix-tapes I made off the radio when I was about 13 and I was listening to one in my car - never ever ever again! I've had this cheesy song in my head since about Friday...

So anyway A few months ago (I think it was around November last year) my supervisor asked if I was going to be using a certain piece of lab equipment soon - there was a colleague who ad a visiting student and blah blah blah and basically it would be lent to another lab until February.

When I got back from fieldwork we sat down and worked out a lab protocol for working with the data from said piece of equipment (he typed, I dictated and later I added in pictures and screenshots with arrows and stuff) and we sent it off to said visiting researcher.

Said researcher freaked out as it turned out there was a box she was supposed to click and she hadn't clicked it and so all her readings were saved in the wrong format. My supervisor made sympathetic noises and forwarded me her email saying "can we help?" and I sent back some suggestions which she seemed to ignore or maybe didn't receive or something.

So a few weeks ago I got an email from this person asking me to take a bunch of reference readings so that she could test whether or not the conversion she tried is actually working or not. I agreed as it's stuff I do often and I can take measurements in my sleep and so I went upstairs to get the stuff out of its case to find that she'd totally dismantled the wires to connect the machine to its power supply. I freaked out, supervisor promised to get it fixed and I sent said visiting researcher a mildly strained email saying that as she had screwed up the power supply she was going to have to wait. She agreed somewhat grudgingly.

So anyway today I was in the lab when my supervisor appeared with the repaired equipment and I figured I'd take the measurements quickly because it has been bugging me for a few weeks now and I would really like to have it done, so I took it all out to find: she'd messed up the sandpaper (which is very important as we use it to clean off surfaces), she'd tangled the wires horribly, adjusted the probe so I couldn't use it without doing some readjustment with pliers and she's totally destroyed a reference sample. These things cost about R2000 each (fortunately I had had the R5000 one with me so she didn't have a chance to destroy it) and it looked like she'd dunked it in water, dropped it, used it as an ashtray... I don't even know, but I've never seen any piece of equipment treated so badly. If I was to guess what happened it would be that she left it in its case in a pocket and washed her clothes.

Te fact that it happens doesn't bother me, stuff goes wrong, if I had R10 for every time my flash-drive has gone through the washing machine, or I've found damp money in my pockets... well lets just say I wouldn't need to study! The fact is, after changing the electronics without asking first, she damaged a really expensive piece of equipment and then calmly packed it back in the box and returned it as if nothing had happened!

I mean seriously, my degree is based off readings from a piece of equipment just like that and I have been known to sleep with it under my bed when we had visiting students in case anything went wrong, and I have every right to use it. So now I've been mean and nasty and laid down the law - nobody else touches that thing until I graduate, then they can drop it in seawater for all I care!

Pretzelling with a purpose

So ever since my slightly over-enthusiastic Sunday morning at the gym I've been feeling very tired. I kept going but I found that while once I got into it I still enjoyed myself, I was tired and not doing very well and basically just not 'feeling' it. I had promised myself a while ago that while I may skip gym if I have something else planned (within reason) I am NOT allowed to skip just because I don't want to. I also end to feel really awful about myself if I skip gym and I battle to sleep. On Wednesday, after a particularly traumatising session on Tuesday (some guy TALKED to me! Did he not understand the universal signal of BACK OFF that I was sending out by wearing earphones?) I left university early so I figured I could go to gym before dinner rather than y usual of going before bed. I checked the little timetable I grabbed a few weeks ago and saw that there was a 6:30pm yoga class.

So I thought 'great! that's nice and while not gentle, not too strenuous and it's something different because I need a break from my usual routine!' so I went home, lay down for a bit, changed and headed off to yoga. Wow. I can't believe I said that!

I should have known it was going to end badly when the instructor was 20 minutes late. Actually I should have got out of there when ten minutes after the class was supposed to start, one of the people (all girls except one guy who was enjoying himself a little bit too much...) jumped up and very perkily announced that we should start warming up. Most of the rest of the people agreed and then proceeded to start doing all kinds of weird pseudo-dance moves, accompanied by some rather heavy breathing. I did yoga when I was in high-school so I was a little bit shocked to see some of what they were doing, as it was way beyond anything I'd ever done. Worried that I had stumbled into an advanced class I checked the timetable on the board, but it just said "Yoga" so I sat and tried to think calm thoughts.

The instructor (who I would have mistaken for just another soccer-mom if it wasn't for the way everyone else flocked around her, and the weird flowy scarves she was wearing) arrived after about 20 minutes and we got started. Firstly, it was TOTALLY an advanced class, in everything but name. secondly, having any kind of a sense of humour is very detrimental to having any kind of sense of balance! So I did my best, falling over periodically, particularly when the instructor tried to tell us stories of her training with "Swami Vanuatu" and how we should practice at home (yes, of course I want to twist my spine into unnatural positions with nobody around to help me!) as we become passionate about postures (and that's a quote).

When it got really insane I refused and sat and watched as I have fieldwork coming up, and chasing lizards with a broken wrist isn't a very good idea. At one stage they were doing the "little bird" or "crane" posture and I had to watch as one girl fell and landed beautifully on her collarbone with her knees still firmly wedged into her armpits. For some reason I was the only person doing any kind of sympathetic flinching!

There was also lots of twisting into weird positions and then somehow stretching your arms around to hold hands while your left arm is wrapped around your right knee which is somewhere around your left ear... i tried, I did not succeed and after two days i still ave trouble bending over or stretching to reach a high shelf or anything.

I am quite sad at the way it turned out. I did yoga in high school and absolutely loved it (although I used to go with friends who were just as giggly as me, so we spent most of the time falling over) and I think that a lot of the stuff they were doing was really cool, particularly in the impromptu warm-up session, where it was almost like watching dancers (with a lot of double-joints) practising. It's sad that I won't be returning to yoga classes there as I didn't feel safe or comfortable and I don't want to get hurt, and even if I try a different session it's with the same instructor and I really didn't like her. And Swami Vanuatu? Really?

At the same time I love going to gym, and I hated the fact that I left there feeling useless. and as long as I want to keep exercising I have to hold on to the fact that I actually do enjoy it and not that I don't feel good enough because I can't wrap my legs behind my head while holding myself up with one finger. Now it is Friday and I'm still sore though, so I guess the bits that I did manage were very effective!

Oh and it; feeing and pouring with rain here at the moment. What's up with that? It made for a very exciting walk through Braamfontein yesterday, but I'll write about that another time!

no pain no... sympathy?

So somehow, during 6 days of not going to gym because I was on antibiotics and feeling miserable, I declined to a point where I am less fit now than I was when I started going back to gym about 2 months ago. How on earth did that happen? I figure I am just 'blessed' with some kind of negative metabolism or something. It's really frustrating because I was really starting to enjoy gym and I could feel myself getting fitter and stuff before I was forced into taking a break. so I might as well keep going, no rain or sleet or... whatever!

So I went to gym last night, so this morning I woke up feeling a little bit sore... but i had decided last night (in a fit of serious thinking while trying to block out the Hallmark movie that my mom decided to watch) that I would go to the 8am class at the gym today. Last time I went to a class I couldn't walk for about a week, but I figured that I've been exercising regularly for a while so it might be ok.

So I got changed into my pyjama pants (I have black pyjama pants that make awesome gym clothes because they're comfy and loose-fitting and stuff) and t-shirt and shuffled off to the gm. The class was fun, it was basically using little weights and doing all kinds of weird things that hurt a bit at the time (and a lot more now), but at some stage about 10 minutes into the class one of my contact lenses decided to move around to the back of my eye. I couldn't find it to move it back, so I figured that I might as well carry on with no depth perception as the only alternative would be to drive home with only one useful eye, or phone my mother to come and fetch me, which wold have been simple considering that I realized I'd left my phone at home.

So I carried on, and it was mostly ok, except at one point when apparently my posture was wrong, but I couldn't see the instructor's hand signals to me, so she stopped the class, paused the awful ABBA-danceified soundtrack (honey honey!) and came over and corrected me. At this point I must point out that while we were all relatively young, we were all gross and panting and tired by then, the instructor was around 65 and hadn't broken a sweat yet. her hair (in a lovely coiffed drag-forward fake-blonde bob) was perfect and I got the feeling she could tow a cement truck with a rope round her forehead.

After the class (why do people clap at the end of a class?) I went and grabbed my stuff from the changeroom while avoiding making eye-contact with any of the people from the class who were now parading around naked. One of them said something to me and I explained that I live right down the road so it's easier for me to go home and shower there, particularly because I had to go and pick up my laptop anyway because I don't feel comfortable leaving it in my car or in a locker with a 20mm padlock... I also managed to sort out the evil contact lens and stop tripping over things

So I got home to find that for some reason we had no water! I managed to kind of get my hair wet with the trickle coming from the shower-head before it died completely. So I was stuck with a dilemma: do I stay home for the day (not an option considering that there was no water and therefore no functional toilets or taps- so besides not being able to go to the bathroom, coffee would be limited), or go and shower at the gym, bearing in mind that the naked people prancing around are the ones who just said goodbye to me!

So I did what any sensible person would do: I made coffee and toast and then went for a swim. Once I was certain that anyone who would recognise me would be gone from the gym I went back and showered on my way in to university. And on the way I poured coffee down my shirt. And then it started raining and I realized I'd forgotten a jacket. I also realized that I'd RSVPed yes to something last night and then forgotten to go.

Fortunately Luke was in his lab and he gave me a jacket and lots of sympathy and now I feel a lot better! Except that I can't lift my arms...

a day in the life of...

Last night, as I was finishing up after a lovely quiet day at work, I got a message from Luke inviting me to movies with him and a few friends. Immediately the internal battle began – since I’ve been on antibiotics I’ve been too tired to go to gym and as it was my first day off the drugs I was planning on going to the gym to battle it out and panic over how unfit I’ve become. Seriously, if I go to gym every day it takes weeks for me to notice any improvement, but if I miss even one day I go downhill ridiculously fast. It’s really frustrating, but I guess I’m stuck with the metabolism I was born with and I have to keep going and live with it.

At the same time I haven’t been to see a movie in ages, and I hadn’t seen the usual movie gang in a long time either. To top it all off, Alfred, one of the guys who works at the vet, heard me stressing about the decision and decided to encourage me to go to the movie. So I decided to go home and then decide from there. When I left work I found that every single robot in the area wasn’t working. So there was a lovely gridlock. I called a friend who lives nearby and she said that it was clearish around her, so I managed to use backroutes and get to her house. She told me in no uncertain terms that I WAS going to the movies, and as I’d left some clothes at her house I was able to change (there was a horrible dog-vomit incident at the vet yesterday, and although I was able to avoid being in the line of fire at any stage, I still felt dirty and disgusting. Then she sat me down and did my makeup. Oh my gosh. The makeup! She’s done it for me before, but typically before we go out clubbing or somewhere where the panda look is ok. I did not intend to arrive at the movies looking like I’d been punched in the eyes, but when I went through my bag for my trusty makeup-remover wipes I realised that I’d left them at another friend’s house (moral of the story, pack up before you leave!).

So I got to the shopping centre and was greeted by a round of double-takes and a few very shocked expressions. They tried to say it was all about the hair (which is relatively bright red at the moment) but I felt really awkward. Once the initial “It wasn’t me! My friend did it and I can’t get it off!” explanation was out of the way I tried to ignore it, but I must admit, I felt uncomfortable, even in my car on the way home, until I got home and scrubbed it all off!

We went and saw ‘Yes Man’ which was really funny, although I caught myself wondering if it was really that great – a lot of the humour that had me giggling helplessly was the type that usually makes me avoid movies entirely. Either way, I was obviously in the right mood for the movie and I enjoyed most of it thoroughly (there was one scene that will stay with me for a bit, and not in a good way)!

This morning started off relatively well, I chatted to a friend, saw my parents off (they’ve taken my grandparents on holiday until Monday), went to gym and nearly died (seriously, a week ago I was the fittest I’ve been in ages and now it’s back somewhere beyond square one), checked my email, too a swim and the went rushing off to work. And that is where it all went wrong…

I was happily driving along a particular stretch of road that connects up to William Nicol (one of the big main roads). This road has two lanes in each direction, no driveways or concealed entrances and enough robots scattered along it that you don’t really ever have to worry about pedestrians jaywalking or anything. And for some completely incomprehensible reason, the powers-that-be decided to make the speed-limit along there 60km/h – the same as in a built-up area on a single lane road with driveways and schoolchildren and so on. In the nearly 5 years that I’ve been driving the only cars I’ve ever seen sticking to the speed limit along there are the dodgy ones that are stuck together with chewing-gum and string that can’t make it over 40 unless they’re on a downhill and they don’t have any passengers.

So of course, today of all days, they decided to sit behind the bushes with their speed cameras. And every single car on the road was pulled over. I was the second-last of my batch and the cop was really nice and polite, we chatted about the weather and how hot it was and then he decided to tell me that as I had been driving at 72km/h he had to give me a fine. I freaked out and explained that I was late for work (which by then I was) and that the road is straight and I hadn’t noticed and so on. To tell the truth I don’t think they’d used the camera on me at all, as they only pulled me over when I drove past, saw the cops and braked with a terrified expression on my face. I apologised profusely and asked if I could call my boss because I was running very late by then (I was about 15 minutes away and I had 5 minutes before my shift started) to tell him that I was going to be late and to find out if the morning receptionist could cover for me for a few minutes until I got there.

I don’t know if the guy had just been trying to scare me, or if the fact that I had taken off my sunglasses, made eye contact and asked how he was today made any difference, but he let me call the vet and explain that I was stuck in a roadblock with police, and then he told me to wait while the lady before me got her ticket. Once she had left he explained that he didn’t want her getting upset that she got a ticket and I didn’t, and he let me off with a warning. And so I drove like a grandmother to work where I collapsed behind the front desk and told my whole long story to the other staff at the vet. Charlotte, the morning lady (who looks about 20 years older than me, but it turns out she is actually a grandmother already) was really sweet and told me to drive carefully and was off on her way.

And that was my day today! Lets hope it gets better!