a long whining session about everything

So I drove past the lady from yesterday, and while she gave me a look that would have stripped pant, she seemed otherwise OK! Admittedly the glare could have been a response to me wide smile at seeing her alive and not bleeding from the head...

I'm tired at the moment. Working during the week at the vet, followed by dashing to the lab to get some more work done has been taking its toll on me. I have a friend (who is really awesome) who has greeting me with some variation on "You look tired" every time I've seen her in the last month. I hate to respond with an explanation because it just comes out sounding whiny!


I spent some time with a friend last night. It's a weird friendship in that it literally went from acquaintance to one of the most honest and insanely-deep friendships overnight. I think a lot of it is that we have very similar issues to deal with and he picked up on it pretty quickly. To risk sounding incredibly cheesy, it's like he 'gets' me. And he's not afraid to tell me I'm full of crap if I need to hear it, and not in the "shut up and grow up and tough it out" kind of way that a lot of my other friends do. Instead he tried to make me figure out what's underneath all the crap that I show the world in general.

To tell the truth the first time we had a really long conversation (like 6 hours of it) I left feeling exhausted, incredibly vulnerable and a little bit angry that he could suggest certain things. A lot of it was me being defensive and holding on really tightly to my security-blanket behaviour that I think is definitely valuable but maybe not very nice.


Fortunately I followed that conversation with three weeks in the middle of nowhere (remember all those fun stories?). Well between facing off leopards and snakes, falling down cliffs and generally acting like a zoologist there is a lot of quiet which makes your brain kick in to introspection-mode. I over think a lot, and when I have no conversations to rehash in my head I start to think about issues a bit closer to home. By the time I came home I had kind of thought through a lot of what we'd talked about and realised that the reason that a lot of it made me angry was because it was true. And the clinging on to the security blankets in the way that I do is a bad thing - it keeps me safe from a lot of very real things (which I'm terrified of dealing with) but it turns me into a person that I don't really like very much.


Anyway the point is that I've been battling with things lately. I haven't been happy in a long time, and I haven't felt like there's anywhere I can go with what's happening in my head. And last night I was prepared for what was going to happen and so I forced myself to keep my mind slightly more open than otherwise and I left afterwards feeling OK about life.


Now there are a few things I have to sort through: I had Lara's voice in my head last night saying something she told me once: "there are two categories of behaviour, acceptable and unacceptable. If someone around you behaves in a manner that is not acceptable according to your standards, then don't let them anywhere near you. You have to have the strength to tell them that they're behaving badly and if they don't rectify the situation then cut them out of your life. They'll only damage you."

Does ignoring the 'deal-breakers' happening around me make me a bad person? I guess I've been sacrificing my self-respect a lot lately and that's not OK. And as much as I can pinpoit where thngs started to go wrong, I finally figured out that it's not about making sure that the person/people to blame get ther come-uppance. It's the fact that if other people let themselves be so easily manipulated, is it worth my sticking around?

My friendships have been dwindling lately. I spent a Saturday night in the gym for crying out loud! I'm kind of reaching a state of not knowing whether it's me or them - I am changing, introspection does that, but at the same time, my security-blanket behaviour works. Its given me friends, achievements, accolades, confidence, basically the life I wanted. To cast it off and be a real person rather than a robot means that the people I associate with might not like me anymore. And that scares me. A lot.

And maybe I shouldn't work to revive friendships that are floundering. if the other person doesn't seem to care, why should I? Is spending a Saturday night alone and lonely, but self-actualised all that scary?

Oh yes it is.

Addictive...

Lately I have come to the conclusion that I have an addictive personality. Thank heavens I figured that one out without having learned the hard way on anything dangerous (should I say thank heavens that gambling was illegal in South Africa for so long that it didn't play any role in my developing psyche? Who knows...)

It all started with guitar hero (no, I am NOT addicted) when I mentioned to Chief Goth that it was a good thing that I didn't have it at home because I would do nothing else. She said that t wasn't a problem for her because she really doesn't have an addictive personality. I noticed that by the end of a guitar-her evening I would always stay for 'just one more song' until I was at least an hour late to be getting home and my family would be nervous wrecks sitting at home.

Than last week Luke, Laura and I ended up playing on a WII at a new coffee place on campus and I realised that as much as I had very little desire to play 10 pin bowling, by the end of it I would have stayed there for the rest of the day quite happily.

Last week Luke showed me how to win at Hearts, which was a lot of fun, with both of us yelling at the computer a lot. A few days later I decided to watch a DVD before bed and ended up playing hearts instead For HOURS. Although apparently I'm not the first to fall victim to the evil game.

So I guess I will just have to stop myself from ever buying any for of video games, and I will have to exercise restraint on my laptop. My desktop is safe because after a nasty run of solitaire addiction I deleted all the games (as well as some mildly essential operating files, oops) about a year ago!

A quick note

So while I was at the vet yesterday I had a weird quasi-out-of-body experience. You know when you're talking and suddenly you hear yourself but as if you were another person listening? I was tling to someone about her cats. I can't repeat the conversation, but here are the notes I took to give to the vet:

Snookums* is fighting with Sweetie-pie.
Sweetie-pie pulled stitches out, but cleaning with saline, ok?
Snookums is scared of Sweetie-pie
neither is eating

*Names have been changed, not because I fear for the cats' privacy (with an owner like tht they have none anyway), but rather because their real names are worse than the ones I made up. True!

So I blinked and...

It's less than a week before Christmas! When on earth did that happen? As always, I had a bunch of goals for before Christmas, which are going to become 'before New Years' which will quickly descend into new years resolutions...

In the spirit of recovering from fieldwork, narcolepsy, diving and life in general, December has vanished into a haze of memories, mostly involving a few special friends and inane games (except for guitar hero, which I still love, but don't rock at nearly as much, but which will never be inane in my book).

So anyway last week I got to go for a real University Lunch, which basically involved going for lunch and then going back to university in time to pack up for the evening. It was fun and I do hope we'll be doing it again soon! I have seen what used to be a special friendship fall into dust (not including me this time, but I am saddened and definitely affected by it). Went Christmas shopping with friends, which was a lot more fun than shopping on my own, but took several hours longer. On the plus side, besides having Luke there to giggle at the random men stripping/walking around in girls' tanktops, kids with mullets... it also meant that we got to have a coffee break in the middle! Usually on my own I shop frantically, then go home and collapse. The injection of caffeine into the middle of the expedition made it infinitely more bearable.

The much anticipated 'Goth Clubbing Night' fell away when chief Goth broke her leg. It was sad and I hope she feels better soon as we played guitar hero last night and she was looking sore and unhappy and generally miserable about life. In true goth fashion, she could have gone clubbing anyway, as she doesn't dance, and her awesomely-cool leg brace thingie means that she has an excuse to wear a scary high shoe on the other foot so that she doen't hurt herself hobbling around, but I'm tired and I can't stay out late and to tell the truth, I'd prefer a nice evening with her and a couple of other friends arbing around (and playing guitar hero).

Guitar hero for the second time was a bit disappointing. I wasn't the incredible player anymore. I still beat everyone, but it was expected this time and not nearly so cool. I also felt that I wasn't playing very well, but I've also reached the point where playing anything (other than Raining Blood which is MY song) at the easy level is boring, so now I play on medium which I don't do nearly as well but at least I don't feel bored and cranky.

I got a really awesome Christmas bonus from the vet this morning! It was very unexpected and totally awesome and will go straight into my camera fund (I am upgrading to an SLR early next year and I'm so ecited I could explode!) and I managed to avoid any guilt becasue I had made them fudge as well as bought stickers for the vets' kids. Hannah Montana all the way!

That's all for me at the moment, must go off and get ready for another fantastic evening of guitar hero!

I am not making a statement or rebelling

I just like the colour blue... hence I dyed my hair blue. It has nothing to do with my parents or friends or an apparent problem with authority.

It's not even that blue! And my favourite colour is NOT blue, it is yellow.

And getting to the zoo at 5am to help set up enclosures and then not be invited to the afterparty is so not cool.

And the monkey is unmanageable. And Elaine is away. I will miss her.

And I'm off to Kruger on Monday with a complete stranger.

I am really tired. Hence the short sentences.

It's raining cats, and dogs and parrots...

I work at a vet on Saturdays. It's generally relatively quiet, I sit back and help the clients who come in, read a bit of the oh-so-awesome stats books (there are actually two, one explains exactly HOW the tests work, and the other explains the logic behind using different tests and how to understand the results in a biologically-significant way), catch up on Mens Health and GQ by reading the copies left by Nick, who works during the week and discuss random stuff with my boss. Occasionally there is a rush of people, like with last weekend's feline leukaemia scare, or Puppy Day, when for some reason people all rush out and buy puppies on the same day. It's not a formal thing, it just happens, and I love it because I get to spend my morning being paid to cuddle cute little puppies.

This morning I rushed in slightly late. The robot a block away breaks regularly every saturday morning. It is green one way and red the other for hours at a time, and it's a main road, so people like me who come in on the red side and need to cross, get to play a fun little game of car-chicken trying to dash across in a gap while people around you hoot and swear and tell you you're irresponsible... until 15 minutes later when they're still sitting there and then they dash across and all the newcomers hoot and flash their lights and tell them that they're irresponsible drivers. Unfortunately if, like me, you get stuck behind someone who isn't aware of the saturday situation, there's not much you can do besides, hoot and flash lights at the person in front of you, who generally gets very flustered and refuses to move and gestures wildly. Until someone turning left or right sneaks across and then they begin to understand that it has been an awfully long red light, and not just becasue they were feeling uncomfortable because of the bad behaviour of the person behind them.

So I rushed in late, and started reading Men's Health. They came to the startling conclusion that if you stop exercising you gain weight! Apparently they did a study where they had a huge group of guys, and half of them stopped exercising and miraculously were out-of-shape after a few months, compared to the control group who ran 30 km a week. You learn something new every day! The sad thing is that as a girl reading mens magazines I can laugh. I know if I picked up the latest Cosmo I'd probably find out similar nuggets of information, but I would then be forced to be offended by their underestimation of the average women's common sense. Or I'd be saddened by the lack of common sense that prompts girls to buy said magazines. At least I know from experience of many afternoons of reading Heat with Joey, that very few people actually read the words, and it's all about the pictures after all.

So back to the story... I barely had time to read 20 pages of the magazine before the floodgates opened and hundreds of people with cats and dogs arrived. The phone rang and rang and rang and I was helping people, filling out vaccination books, answering the phones, having discussions about cat collars (with an adorable little boy and his dad), getting bitten by a bull terrier ("he's such a sweetheart! He won't bite you!" Hah!) and so on. It didn't stop until half an hour after my shift had officially ended!

Actually it ended 5 minutes after the end of my shift and then some moron came in and insisted to talk to the vet about cat food, but the vet was operating on a dog that was bleeding everywhere and he wanted to go into the theatre and chat to the vet. I said no several times and he refused to listen until the vet came to see what all the noise was about. The guy was pretty loud! Unfortunately in the meantime a bunch of people drove past, saw him inside and went "Oh good! The vet's open!" and rushed in. While on the phone I had a hysterical girl with a sick cockatiel who refused to take him to the only bird specialist in about 50 square kilometres. The vet in question is really nice, and actually treats my birds, but I was unable to talk any sense into her so I think she may have gone off to pretoria with her sick bird.

By the time I got home I was so pumped up on the adrenaline that I literally fell over and had to take deep calming breaths. And the watch House until I fell asleep. Still gives me weird dreams! better than Malaria-prevention medicine!

introspection is dangerous!

So once again I came home lizard-free today! It was still a very action-packed day, I explored 2 huge outcrop, confirming my suspicions that they were lizard-free, and managed to get nicely sunburned in the process. At a third site, I went to a spot that I know to be a good lizard-trapping area, to find a massive snake crawling into the crevice I was planning too set traps at. When I say huge, I estimted the length to be around 2 1/2 metres. Even taking into account that I got the fright of my life, you're still left with at least 2 metres of scary snake! I like snakes, I really do, but I like them when I see them with someone who knows about snakes. I like to handle them if I know for a fact that they can't hurt me, or that if they do it won't put me in hospital. To see a giant snake while in an area that has no cellphone coverage, at least 40 minutes drive from a hospital... that's scary!

So the snake went across the outcrop and into a revice, no doubt having a lovely snack on the lizards inside. They were fantastically oblivious to him, some of them even ran up and tongue-flicked a welcome. I hope that he didn't get any of my males, but I didn't get close enough to watch, plus his head was under the rocks, and I couldn't see what he was doing.

When I'd stopped watching him, sneaking closer to look at him properly so that I can try very hard to ID it when I get home, i moved to another outcrop, doing some fabulous offroad driving and settled down to try and get at least one more male. No such luck. so I started thinking.

I discovered last year that fieldwork is very dangerous in that while you're very active and busy all of the time, it's mostly physical work, and very little else. Plus you have to spend long hours out of doors, waiting for lizards to go onto traps, which means that you start to think. If you add the sun, the heat and the lack of other people to put things into perspective, the introspection can get very unpleasant, if enlightening!

It may help to point out that almost all of my very deep and insightful opinions on relationships, people around me, religion, science, science AND religion, education and many other topics, were thought up and thought through while sitting on a rock, in the sun, waiting for a lizard to stop jumping over my traps and run onto them.

Today was no different. I started to figure out why I have been so frustrated lately (lizard-trapping notwithstanding), why I'm still here when I could have given up and gone home, and how that links in to my somewhat irrational and yet exceedingly rational fears about life in general. It's left me a little bit subdued, and for once I wish I was at home, so that I could talk some of it out with someone. at the same time I know what the answers are, but how to change things is another matter entirely.

So I came home and watched "Good Luck Chuck" it was awful, and therefore exactly what I needed! I'm going to go and fond some other terrible movie to watch... I have a whole bundle of terrible horror movies that Joey gave me before I left, maybe I'll giggle my way through one of them before I go to bed. Too bad I didn't bring the mutant-cow-baby-slasher movie with me!

And 2 makes 10!

I got another 2 males today, wich brings me to a wonderful total of 10. I'm trying to ignore the fact that in summer I usually averaged about 5 a day, with my record being 10 in one morning... It's cold. I'm trying!

Had an unfortunate incident where I realised that the washing machine (the luxury of doing fieldwork in the same place as some of the higer-ups in my department - a washing machine and a microwave are unheard-of luxuries in the field!) isn't working. It might be because there is a leak in the main water pipe to the outside bathrooms - I turn the water on whenever I shower, but otherwise leave it off - which has lead to some air-blocks in the pipes. so the washing machine is refsing to work as there is no water going into it. Fair enough.

I'm not sure what's worse... handwashing clothes, or the fact that I've been here for long enough to need to do laundry! To be fair, I didn't need to do washing nearly as often when I was here before, as I brought more clothes, but this time I packed very very quickly, and only brought clothes that were relatively destroyed in the last trip. There's no shame in wearing holey jeans when there's nobody around to see them, and I'd rather save the non-holey/ripped/glue-stained clothes for times when I need to appear as a normal human being rather than just a zoologist.

Knowing all of this, there's still a certain feeling of permanence to doing laundry. Sure I've done the domestic stuff here, I cook, clean, buy groceries, tidy up occasionally and have my morning and evening routines as well as the essential midday nap. But when you start washing clothes, it becomes... home, not just temporary accomodation. Home is the only word I can come up with to describe it, and that's far from perfect. it's just that I'm here now, and I'm settled now. And I've done laundry, and cooked my meals days in advance for when I know I'll be too tired to cook (the alternative being cereal for dinner which gives me weird dreams and confuses me competely).

I was watching the Long Way Down again today, and two things about living in Africa really struck me:

1. We really don't know a lot about what's going on in our own continent. They were visiting people and hearing stories of horrible horrible atrocities, and I'd had no idea. I know bad stuff happens, but we never hear about it. On the other hand I know the finer points of everything going on in the US and the UK (not everything, but I think we're mostly pretty clued-up), but almost nothing about Africa. It's really sad, and really pathetic. Why don't we care? And why are we so western-centred. I know as a caucasian african (if I'm even allowed to call myself African...) I have roots in Europe and the western world in general, but I'm not European! If I've learned anything from my trips overseas it's that my family came form the UK but we don't live there anymore. I live on African time, speak south african slang (with an awful s'effrican accent that is unintelligable to most of the english-speaking world - I say 'rim', you hear 'room') and a part of me loves the noiose and the friendliness and the chaos that comes with living here.


2. We are so incredibly lucky. The whole group got to Kenya and saw elephants and went all "WOW! ELEPHANTS!!!" I tried to think back to my first experience seeing elephants in the wild, but I don't remember it. If you go on game drives they even get a bit annoying, they walk in the middle of the road and refuse to move, or you get stuck behind some tourist who has never seen... an elephant before! Not that they aren't very cool, Elephants rock. They were also convinced that lions were going to come after them in the middle of the day, and got super-excited about zebras. I'm waiting to see their reactions to impala...

It just stuns me every time I realise how incredible life here is, maybe more so because I'm living in the gammadoelas at the moment, but we have so much! There's always something cool to chase after or look at. Just today - and it was a cold and horrible day except for an hour or two, I saw kudu, hartebees, duikers, baboons (I sat on the veranda, and looked across to see a baboon sitting in a tree in the same posture as me!), vervet monkeys, several different lizards - not many of mine unfortunately, butterflies, real flies, dung beetles, bees, ants, sunbirds, lots of other birds, scorpions... the list goes on. And the scary thing is, I wasn't even looking for them (except the lizards...).

It creeped me out to realise that I'm uncomfortable walking across an outcrop when lizards aren't scurrying around. It's not just frustrating, it's weird. So my point of the story: Africa is rox! and we should really appreciate it a whole lot more than we do!

Weird days and weirder dreams

I woke up today to see that it was cold and cloudy. So I went back to sleep. Half an hour later I got up anyway and decided to get some work done, as well as some necessary housework, washing dishes, sweeping floors, washing out showers and so on (wow I sound so domesticated!). For the first part of the morning it was as if the farm was messing with me. The sun would come out, and I'd rush and pack for the field, then it would get overcast and cold really quickly. Finally, only about an hour after the time I usually leave for the field I decided to just go on and try catch lizards. I was going crazy!

So I went off to one of the biggest outcrops on the farm, where a friend and I once caught something like 12 male lizards in a day (8 in the mornng and 4 in the afternooon). I stayed there for about 3 hours before it got really cold. It had been sort of on-and-off all morning, but I'd managed to get a bit sunburned and have a nasty fall that left me shaking. I twisted my wrist a little bit but it seems t be ok. I'll strap it up before bed and it'll be as good as new by tomorrow. I caught one male, out of all 2 that I saw (seriously, did they all die or something? this is ridiculous!) I also caught an adult Gerrhosaurus validus which was unbelievably cute! I was going to bring him back to photograph him, but decided not to. Kind of an act of good faith to the lizard population or something. Besides, he was so scared! They have really big eyes, and I think the Mickey-mouse syndrome part of me responds to that!

After that I came back to the house and was planning on going off to scout out a few other locaions but it got super cold then so I figured it was pointless. I took my usual after-lunch nap instead where I had the craziest dream! It was about the zoo again, for some reason I've been havng a lot of zoo-related dreams lately, often involving non-zoo friends of mine. Weird. I was also relieved to find out that the Protest March was relatively uneventful, as I'd been worrying about my friends who were taking part.

After that I did the final measurements on some of the lizards I'd caught. It's called 'speccing' them, which basically means that I measure their colours. I've been speccing a lot of lizards for other people recently because colour is what I'm really really into,so its become kind of annoying for me. Which has been incredibly sad. I remember the day I learned to use a spec, my friend Dee and I ran all over the place finding random stuff to measure (Laura's collection of birthday cards being a huge contributor!) and I was so excited. It's sad when you lose the fun part of something you love.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was speccing my lizards again, or maybe it was because I was listening to Silverchair (thanks Travis!) while I was doing it, but I really enjoyed speccing the lizards again! I'm so glad, and Im feeling so positive about everything suddenly. Im not sure why. But I'm really glad!

random thoughts

It is currently almost 9:30pm, which is later than I've been up since I got to the field (the stress of packing usuall leads to insomna, ,whch in the case was over the course of about 2 weeks, so I've been catching up on a lot of sleep). As is I'm exhausted, so this will be completely incoherent unless I take the easy option and write down a list of random thoughts. Hopefully this will stop them rushing around my head and let me sleep easier (like that's a problem!).

1. I hate the fact that I have to proofread my posts now. I just can't type properly on a laptop! I do something between -finger hunt and peck and touch typing, enough that I battle if I hurt any finger, but not good enough to type without looking at the keyboard occasionally. And for the record I NEVER use my thumbs for typing. No idea why, I just don't! Not even the spacebar. I just tried and it felt extremely weird.
2. Trapping is not going well. Besides lack of lizards, lot of the traps are not working, and the glue has solidified. As i don't generally feel traps before setting them, I believe that this has had a very big effect on my entire lack of success over the last 2 days.
3. It's getting colder by the day and I woke up to fog and rain this morning. It cleared up, but I'm very worried!
4. I went for a walk about an hour ago and it was really beautiful. I used to walk every night but haven't on this trip. I didn't go far because I didn't want to, and its cold and I heard a leopard. I realised how incredibly lucky I am to have this place as my home for a few months every year. To surprise random antelope, or have to chase off baboons, or run from a potential leopard, sounds like I'm living in one of those cheesy books about 'Africa' except that I don't have 40 dedicated servants to carry my things. And I don't wear a pith helmet.
5. The water-pipe to the bathrooms has a leak. Not a problem really as I only use te outside bathroom to shower, so I just turn it on when I need to. Fortunately the main house has an un-interrupted water supply. Weird because I thought all the water was controlled from there, but aparently not. The only mystery greater than the plumbing in this place is the electricity!
6. I almost ran out of leftovers today, so I will have to cook tomorrow night. I tend to cook big meals and live off them for days. The problem is that I only really have enough groceries to make one mega-huge meal to last 4-5 days. I havae plenty after that but not if I want to eat properly - and in long-term fieldwork eating properly (I'm talking tons of fruit and veg and protein etc) is super-important if you don't want to flake out in the middle of the day. I just don't want to go shopping until I've made a decision about how long I'm going to stay here.
7. I'm really really tired. Which makes no sense. I understand about catching up on sleep, but going to bed before 9 every night, getting up around 7ish, working in the field until lnchtime and then napping for a few hours when I get back... it's ridiculous!
8. I have a lot of work to do. Analyses, write-ups etc. While I'm not processing lizards in the afternoons (as I have no lizards to process. Correction, I have 2) I should be making headway into the workload. I'd better start on that soon.
9. It's a full moon tonight. It's so bright outside you can see every blade of grass, every stone, everything! It's really amazing!
10. I was sitting outside just now adn bats were swooping around me eating the inects that were attracted to the lights from the house. It happens every time, and every time it's awesome!
11. I miss the students and the people who were here last time.
12. I don't miss being surrounded by people.
13. I don't understand how I can be so antisocial and still miss people. When they are around I spend half my time trying to avoid them and get some time alone.
14. I really need to get some sleep.
15. Good night!

looking back

So tomorrow is my birthday, and I feel like indulging in some reminiscing about the last year. Because I can!

It's weird, I feel like I've never actually been 22. about 8 months ago I though I was 23 for some reason, and have been preparing to turn 24. Except that I'm still 22. Almost exactly a year ago I took my first long trip that I drove on (previously the furthest I had ever driven was a 150km field trip), taking myself 950km away from home all alone. I spent my birthday at Augrabies, the most beautiful place in the world, and spent the day watching some pretty awesome lizards. I drove home the next day. On the way down my CD player stopped working, so I ended up spending 11 hours listening to OFM (the sound of central south africa), with their million repeats of Justin Timberlake songs, and weird adverts for butcheries ("Manny's meat, waar goeie vriende...MEAT!"). On the way home I listened to it again. That was the day of the highschool shootings in the US, so I had a rather unpleasant trip back, thinking about violence, and kids, and what it all means.

The day after my birthday I also got my first ever ticket, for running a stop-street in a tiny town in the northern cape. The sign was almost hidden, the lines on the road were faded and it was raining. The people in front of me didn't stop so I didn't know it was there. Unfortunately, coming the other way was a van full of policemen on their way to lunch!

22 was the year when I came to grips with being a PhD student, and learned a lot about friendship and the incredible support I got in a decision to start a doctorate at 21. I still have days when I feel like I'm just pretending, like a little kid dressing up in adult's clothes that are waaay too big, but I also know that I ahve a supoprt system for days like that, and I'm eternally grateful!

I started geocaching, which has shown me exactly how much we walk past every day without knowing that its there! I went to the Wild coast for the first time and had my first real holiday in years! My brother got married (ok, I was still 21, but it was a big event!) as did a lot of my friends. I got tickbite fever for the first time! and sunstroke for the millionth. Elvis began his travels, after I got him in an experience where I laughed so hard I couldn't stand up!

I did my own fieldwork for the first time ever, and realised a lot of what was gonig on while I was a field assistant and I didn't necessarily understand why people reacted they way that they did. I learned to spend time alone, and take long walks when I got frustrated. I leanred to love the simplicity of waking up every day witha simple task, and working non-stop to do whatever needed to be done. To be the one who has to make the decision when things go wrong, and to make a plan to stop any other mishaps. To get back to Joburg has never been harder!

There have been a lot of firsts in the last year, and a lot of times that I didn't feel like I was coping. Which meant that I learned a lot about how much I can actually deal with, when to stop and give up, and when to keep going. I learned about support systems, and how when you leave friends behind for 3 months at a time, you can pick up right where you left off, as long as you remember that they didn't stop living when you weren't there.

So much happened that I can't explain, or write about properly. I guess I'm scared, with so much happening in one year I'm not quite sure I can handle any more in the coming eyar. But if nothing new happens... I don't think I could handle it either! But I guess I will, because I always do. And that's a good thing! I think.

walking

Since I got here, almost 2 months ago, every evening/late afternoon I've taken a walk. It varies, from rather ambitions exploring and finding all kinds of new outcrops and plants and running ito kudu ALL the time, to days that have been hard work and i'm feeing a bit down so I'll walk to one of the outcrops, lie on my back and stare up at the beautiful blue sky until it starts getting dark when I'll walk back. I always hate going back, into the brightly lit house. I take a torch with me, but rarely use it, unless I left a bit later than usual and then get a bit more ambitious than I'd intended. There are a lot of big loose rocks on the roads and paths here, and it can be really dangerous to walk in the dark, particularly with my track record for injury!

For a few weeks I would walk along a really narrow path, through grass that is as tall as me, to a flat bit of road that isn't too rocky, where i would run for a bit. That was fine, but when I got really badly sunburnt and sunstroke it had to stop because moving too much hurt. I'm still relishing the ability to sleep on my back, twist to grab something, bend over...

Lately I've been pretty lazy in my walks. Its been raining a lot, and I got frustrated, but never walked far. When it doesn't rain it gets so blisteringly hot (and humid) that I get home from the field and collapse, having had at least 2 1/2 litres of water in the four hours that I was out and still being thirsty.

Today was a bad day. It was raining when i woke up, so i went back to sleep. an hour later the sun was coming out, so I dashed off, set up traps and it because so hot that nothing moved, and I caught a few lizards for the Masters student, but nothing for me, which was exhausting and frustrating! I came home, did some work with the lizards that I have here and slept until I had to work on the lizard (yes, just one) that I caught yesterday. After helping the masters student (who officially doesn't lift a finger to help me, and it really annoys me) with the lizards I had caught for her, I went for a walk.

There is a tiny little outcrop a few hundred metres from the house, where there is a tiny population of lizards, with one male who I hae never been able to catch. I figured I'd go there, its a fitting place for frustration. In the first few weeks when I was really upset with the other student I would go down there and call Lara for smpathy and advice. I got there in under a minute and then looked up at the road. The first time I went walking was during the first week that I was here. I walked long the road, took a little path and got totally lost in a clump of trees, but managed to find my way back because the lights in the house were on.

I realised that i hadn't taken a proper walk in ages, so I followed the road around the small loop, which goes past the closest outcrop and then back to the house. it's a hilly walk, but not long, probably around 2km or so. I've done the worst parts carrying equipment before and survived. So I walked the loop, stopping only to take a large roll of rusty barbed wire out of the road (I have to dodge it when I'm driving to the farthest outcrop every day and it gets quite hair-raising!). By the time I got back it was almost dark. the frogs were out in full force and it was deafening, but not unpleasant. the moon is a crescent, and looks bigger here than it is at home. I could almost imagine the little kid from the dreamworks logo sitting in it and fishing!

So that was my day!

The little things in life

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while! I was planning on using this as a record of my first field season, but it just hasn't happened. Firstly, everything here is always hectic, and secondly... life in the field is tremendously dramatic and exciting when you're there, but in actual fact, when I try to explain what's been going on, I always realise how incredible boring it is. Here's my basic schedule:

06h30: wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, pack equipment for the field
07h30: leave for the field
07h40 - 08h00: walk from car to field site, taking two trips because of all the equipment
08h00 - 12h00: trap lizards, getting sunburnt, exhausted and often injured in the process ( I consider a day that I don't bleed as a day wasted)
13h00: leave field site, get back to the house and process samples. If possible take a nap on he dodgy futon couch thing (photos will be added as soon as I get home to faster connection speed!
14h00: start other work - either processing lizards - which can take hours, or else walking around the farm for a few hours with traps, trying to get extra lizards.
17h00: start finishing up the previous days lizards, do readings on the other student's lizards
23h00: bed

That's it, 7 days a week! if it rains, I'll use the opportunity to catch up on sleep, get my work done slightly earlier and take walks for fun instead of for work. Nothing too exciting to write about! Occasionally something will happen - like I'll be bleeding more profusely than usual, or the time I got sunstroke and was unable to sleep for 3 days because I was too burnt to lie down in any workable posiion. Or the power failure the other night, which had a nasty effect on our food which i only realised 2 days ago, after cooking with some of said food and becoming violently ill for two days. There was also the day I pioneered a new lizard-trapping strategy, of hiding in bushes and then jumping out to scare lizards onto traps. it worked very well until I realsied that sme of the farmers from next door had just driven past, and found me tumbling out of bushes to be mildly amusing!

I can't really think of anything else interesting.

Its coming close to the end of this season's work. I'm a bit stressed, I have a lot to do in the next 3 weeks, and am not nearly where I need to be. We lost 6 of the last 8 days to rain, which also doesn't really help too much! I can't wait to get home and see everyone again, but I'm also dreading all of this being over. Its kind of nice, being in charge of my own schedule, knowing that if I don't work hard enough I have to answer to myself. I've also grown to like the farm, its really beautiful, especially at aroun 5 or so in the afternoon, when I take a walk, and its all quiet and cool, and still. I really love the fact that if I can't sleep, I can also go for a walk, without worrying about anything more than disturbing a sleepy kudu along the way. It took the farmers next door 5 weeks to realise that we were here, we're so isolted. It'll be hard to go home to the noise and the rush of joburg, where there are people everywhere and traffic and the noise which gave me such a headace when I went home for a couple of days a little while ago. The idea of having to switch my priorities from catching lizards to having a social calendar and christmas shopping and having people around all the time... I miss the people back home lke crazy, but I'm not sure I can handle going home just yet!

Do I send out 'encourage me?' vibes?

ok, I know according to the desperation-style tone of my last blog, the question is kind of redundant, but, over the last few days people have all been trying really hard to encourage me. I'm not talking 'Go to south america! My astrologer said it's safe there!' (true story) kind of encourage, but the real "I know you. I know you can do this and I'll stand up for you!' kind of encouragement. It's awesome, but really sudden.

For example, Jo threatened to fire me last week for going away on fieldwork and taking Luke with me. As far as I know, the second she put the phone down Lara started yelling at her and defending me. WhenI saw her yesterday (Lara, not Jo), she kept on telling me that it'll work out and Joey has no right and so on. It was really nice of her!

Random customers keep asking about my studies and how they're going. I don't remember discussing them with many people but apparently they know me. It's nice, but kind of creepy. Like the world is watching me. I'm not sure I'm ready for it.

Then today the Australian gave me a talking-to about burnout and keeping a balanced life and how I'm intelligent and just need experience and I've got the right personality to be a scientist and so on. It was really nice, but I got the feeling that he wasn't talking about me. The same way that I felt I've been faking it in my studies so far, maybe I've been faking my personality for just as long. It was nice having him around though, we laughed a lot. My bat(rechristened Vlad, Dalv and Rodney, currently Edgar Rodney Smythe) was 'mysteriously' hung from the ceiling over the weekend and now dangles over my desk. Whenever I need to procrastinate I swing him around and then dodge his flights around my head. He also made me two CDs, one didn't work, so I got a blank CD, the other Bonobo, is really cool. Chilled, Cafe-del-marish but not, if you know what I mean.

Otherwise I've been pretty unproductive. I realised on the weekend exactly how tired I was, and I ended up sleeping a lot, between work and stuff. I also (at work) watched Happy Feet (disappointing), Zoom (better than expected), The Holiday (I didn't finish it, I got bored), Bee Season (a freaky movie that I didn't like much. My fascination for spelling bees continues though. I just don't get it!) and something else that was obviously mediocre because I forgot what it was. I also got along really well with Chris, which was weird. He's got addicted to the teddy bear machine and gave me 2 frogs and a fluffy toadstool thing. I planned to give one of the frogs to the australian but forgot.

Of of the honours students found sperm for the first time today. There was much rejoicing! The other one came back from very unsuccessful fieldwork, empty-handed but very happy with himself for getting an all-expenses paid holiday. I'm finding him more annoying by the minute.

I'm reading articles on personality research in animals. In one study people dressed up as ghosts (complete with buckets on their heads) and measured the dogs' response. Weird.

I'll say something more interesting when I have something to say...

post #100!!!

So it's now officially post number 100! *throwing confetti!* I'm sorry, I should have reached this prestigious landmark quite some time ago, but by actually working in the real world lead to me neglecting my blog a little bit.

This week has been odd. My supervisor has been back, but I haven't seen too much of him, besides one meeting and a few strange conversations. the Autralian came back today and there was much hilarity. I had no idea a labelling tool thingy could be so much fun!

I've been working hard this week, finally making some real headway into my proposal and getting things done. I'm still floundering slightly, but I think if I work properly it should be ok. the main problem is that there are a lot of things I know NOTHING about and I need to learn a bunch of new techniques. That generally involves me writing emails to random academics and begging for help. It's awkward! I hate writing "Dear so&so, I am a PhD student..." I don't FEEL like a PhD student. I feel like an honours student who has faked her way this far and is about to go horribly wrong.

So I'm a bit depressed. I just get the feeling that I peaked last year and it's all downhill. Like those kids at school who were straight A students, captain of whatever sport and so on who got to university and failed and dropped out because it wasn't school anymore. The gap between honours and what I'm doing now is just as big. I ended up spending about 2 hours with Luke (and Laura a bit later) getting more and more depressed as we realised that we were both feeling the same way and how horrible it is. I think we should switch supervisors. I can get excited and throw ideas around and learn so much when I'm talking to Luke's supervisor, and he seems to be able to talk to mine. The trouble is I don't like what Luke and his whole lab study. It's interesting, but nothing like as cool as what I'm going to be doing!

so I'm exactly where I want to be, doing what I want to do, and I'm so incredibly depressed. Lets hope I get over myself soon and get back to work like a sensible person.

Oh,and I'm going to mycoke festival! It's going to be awesome!

For once I just can't think of a title...

I've really fallen out of the habit of writing here. Maybe that's because I'm actually moderately productive at the moment. Vanessa sent me an article yesterday about how boring scientific articles are, and how we're trained to write in a really boring style. I managed to read the whole thing without losing concentration, which is the first time that's happened in ages. So maybe I'm struggling so much because of the boring style of scientific writing. The scary thing was that in the list of things to do to keep your writing boring, I identified with a lot of them! So my writing is boring too :(

On a positive note, the honours students finished their presentations yesterday. The first one was ok, not great though. The problem is that he's doing the whole 'my supervisor must contact me' thing, so a lot of his points were completely confused. Especially the experimental design, the stats and so on. Often he's start a sentence with something like "I'm not quite sure how I'll do this yet." As I said, he's still a K-I-D-S in a lot of ways. He's heading off on fieldwork in a few days, but doesn't know how he's going to store the animals there for 2 weeks, what to feed them and so on. He really needs to talk to my supervisor, but I don't know if he will. the thing is that my supervisor tends to forget about pretty much everything that's not in his immediate vicinity. It's annoying but you have to work around that and actually remind him of stuff. I'm not getting involved, so this should be interesting.

The other student's presentation was a lot better, she'd actually sent it to both her supervisors and me for feedback. So the supervisors corrected the science side of things and I commented on stuff like fonts and slide layout. she also did an extra practise session with me, so it came out sounding pretty good. There were a few issues, like the fact that she has absolutely no history with behavioural ecology and that sort of thing, so she's confused about the main issues that she's investigating. She's learning quickly and I'm sure she'll sort it out. At least she's not too proud to ask for help!

Otherwise I went to Claire's kitchen tea on Saturday. It was in Boksburg at the House of Ribs. TI was fun, very small. It's looking like this wedding is going to be a lot smaller than the huge ones I've been going to, which is nice. I'm glad I got a chance to meet some of the people who will be there.

Chris has been running the shop for Jo while she's away for 2 weeks. HE's gone a complete power-trip, taken practically all the shifts, kicked me off a shift (I wanted to go at 5 or so on Saturday when it got busy, he refused, and then told Jo I hadn't offered anything). she got really angry when I organised for Matt to work for me this Saturday so I can help with stuff for my brother's wedding. It turned out Christ had asked Matt already and then not told me. Then he called Jo and said I was refusing to work. She sent me an angry message and I called her immediately and she screamed at me. So I'm working on saturday and Carla is angry with me for not helping. I can't win sometimes :(

I watched some interesting movies recently. On Sunday I watched half of 'Little Miss Sunshine' before it went out. It was awesome! I can't wait to see the rest of it! I was laughing so hard at some points! I will make more substantial comments when I've seen the rest of it. After that I started watching 'Spellbound' which is a documentary folloiwing a few of the kids going to the national spelling bee in america. They show it on ESPN! It just really shocked me to see how long some people spend learning to spell words that they will probably never use. And the kids work so hard! Why does anyone care? It's spelling. And there's no international contest because nobody actually cares. I just feel really sad for kids who spend such huge chunks of their life doing that, What for? Will it actually get them anywhere. I guess they learn to perform under pressure and apply themselves to studying for something and so on, but really.

Then yesterday I took my huge piles (2 piles) of marking home to mark in front of the tv. I had a movie called Enigma, with Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet. I enjoyed it so much I kind of forgot about my marking pretty early on and just sat there watching it, so I ended up sitting marking until quite late last night. I left one set of memos at wits, so I only got through one pile, but at least it's done now. I don't know why I liked it so much, it's very different to the sort of thing I usually watch. I don't know, but I liked it.

Anyway I must go and read more boring papers. then mark a HUGE stack of drawings.

It's over!

And now we reach the end of yet another week at Wits. It's been entertaining, while mildly productive. I've got to the 'start-writing' phase of section 1 of my proposal, but am putting it off in favour of reading for chapter 2.

I also spent countless hours TAing, marking and doing general admin around wits, while sitting her until late at night working on my actual research. It's weird, we are ehre primarily as research students, but have to squeeze in the research among all the rest of life at wits.

I saw a lot of people's photos - Sarah's from Dubai and a new student from downstairs showed us so many amazing REAL desert photos that I really want to travel again. I'm thinking that Sunday at work would be a good time to sit down with some maps and start planning. Just because a trip is 4 years away doesn't mean that I can't start getting excited!

I'm still babysitting the honours student. Rather 1 of them. The other one is really calm, as was expected. So far there was one very anxious day but otherwise he's as relaxed as is possible! The other one is a bit calmer because the Australian, her cosupervisor (and thus someone who actually UNDERSTOOD what was expected of her), came back for a day and helped her a lot. She emailed me a copy of the big presentation but forgot to attach it. Oops.

Anyway, world war 3 is still going at home. I gave up on fighting, it's too much effort, so I'm just avoiding most people. It's less draining.

Otherwise I had a lot of funny things happen, watch this space and I mightr write about them. I laughed a lot this week, which counts for something!

because I'm tired of reading

I worked today! Not that much, but enough to be able to go to bed knowing that my waking up actually had some purpose besides getting a sore head and neck (bad dream, fell out of bed). I'm nowhere near where I planned to be today, but it's all progress and I'm starting to get excited about my project again.

On the downside my dog is sick. He was looking a bit ...not right... yesterday and he was licking his paw. Tonight he has almost no fur on his mouth and his paw looks HORRIBLE! it's almost hairless too... so I put some disinfectant on it all and a sock over his foot to stop him licking it (he looks adorable!) and I'm going to see how he is tomorrow. I can't get him to the vet until at least tomorrow afternoon, unless it's really bad, in which case Luke and Kelly will be TAing all aloooone! *evil laugh*!

One of the students from the field-trip made a little movie-thing of photos and videoclips from the trip and screened it today. It's really cool, I wish we'd done that for our third-year fieldtrip. I remember getting really depressed coming home from that because I missed it so much. That's the crappy side of being a post-grad. you get to go on trips, but it's hard to actually go the way we did when we were KIDSes. Anyway the movie we saw today was awesome, but I must admit, the clip of me falling over in the mudflats was a lot cooler in my head (less - for lack of a better word - ungraceful). Still funny though!

I also chatted to one of the new honours students in my lab today. She's actually really nice, I think we'll get along ok. She's also started her own CC - a homeschool tutoring company, and said I can work there occasionally. I'm not sure if I'm going for it, but at least the opportunity is there. I saw the other honours student too, but he and I don't see eye-to-eye much. he's still very much an undergrad at heart (aren't we all) and hasn't learned to distance himself from the KIDSes too well. I'm not saying that being friends with them is bad, it's just that he doesn't spend any time with the people in his own class (who are nice kids, really). So a) he'll have little/no authority when it comes to teaching his 'friends' and b) when the pressure starts, which it will, no matter how chilled he is, he'll be all alone with friends who have no clue about what he's going through. I would never have made it through last year without all the help and support I got from the honours room. I doubt he's even got a desk there yet. And every time I try to show that I'm around if he needs anything he freaks out because he thinks I'm stressing. I'm not. I just know what happens if you leave stuff too long. He's a really nice guy, I'm just not sure we'll be hanging out too much in the next year!

Anyway I'm going to go to bed to fall asleep over another paper. I missed working hard!

resolution #43: I will be antisocial

I've decided that the root of all my problems is that I'm too social. After I left the wedding at midnight on Saturday and came down with flu on Sunday, proceeded to get very little done at wits all day today and now have to take a day off to do wedding stuff tomorrow... I've had enough.

The problem is that I just like people too much. I mean, in general, I wish there weren't so many, that they behaved better while driving and so on, but I like spending time with certain people. Today, after giggling our way through a prelab and getting horrendously bored during a tree identification lab, Luke, Kelly, Luke's sister and I went to have tea in my lab. Then Laura joined in and Brett and it was really nice. So I got to wits at 9:30 worked until about 11, went for coffee, got back to work, got lunch (my mom packed me a slightly dubious sandwich) went to the prelab to the lab and then only left about 2 hours later.

And every time I think about the huge workload that's being procrastinated I cringe and then carry on messing around. To make things worse I found an old PhD, and now I feel all inadequate. Maybe I'm just not ready. The only thing that's stopping me from deregistering and leaving the country is the fact that if I were doing masters I'd be just as ineffective as I am right now.

Anyway, I'm going to attempt to do some work and then go to bed.

Sounds like fun.

It's hot...

It it SO hot today, I don't know what to do with myself. I want to swim, but I have so much work to do still.

I was planning on working at work yeasterday morning, but when Matt arrived still drunk from the night before I had to do actual job-work rather than reading papers and so on. Then I ahd to rush off to do some shopping for Lara's birthday and then off to her birthday party last night. It was fun, at a Greek restaurant in the Design quarter, a centre I've never been to before. They have a Primi there, which was right next door. It was really nice to see Drew and Justin again, I really missed them, but I'm afraid that it was a bit awkward because most of our little gang (Joey, Justin, Drew, Nikki - who wasn't there, and so on) really don't like Lara's other friends very much. So we just sat in awkward silence for a lot of the evening. Drew was in a particularly bad mood, and as I was next to him it didn't help much...

Once Drew and Justin left it got better and the evening finished up with the waiters coming around to sing happy birthday, but first they blasted us with some kwaito-type music and made her dance with them! It was hysterical! She was still relatively soberish when I left, but half an hour later I got an sms from her to say 'thank you for your friendship' which makes me wonder about what happened next!

Work this morning was the usual, except that Nikkie (not Nikki) failed to arrive for her shift. So Matt and I watched Will Farrell movies and I failed to get any other work done, once again!

So I'm off to work now, I sketched out a basic outline for a project at work today, so now I just need to flesh it out with some actual research!

Here is a picture I took in Namaqualand while Luke and I were exploring our 'back garden (i.e. the mountains behing our house just over a small fence. Climbing it was always an adventure!).