Don't fish if you don't want to catch anything

This post is partly a rant. I'm sorry but there are some things that have been bugging me lately:

A while ago a friend of mine sent me an email asking me to critique something she had done. i thought that what she had done was awful and just... it sucked. So after a few hours of getting advice from a few people around me as to what to say to her, I sent a carefully worded reply where I basically said that she was very creative, but it's not my style and I suggested a few things to make it a bit more... I think accessible was the word I used.

Either way I am very aware that I am fussy, people have very different tastes and I do think it's good for people to experiment a little bit because sometimes the things that work are quite surprising and are only found by trial and error and experimenting.

That was the last I've heard from her. And from what I gather from the other people she asked for advice is that she thought that her 'experiment' was awesome and everyone else dutifully told her so, so I have been removed because I'm not sticking to the script! It's not like I was mean or anything...

Seriously, if you ask for my opinion, don't be surprised if that's what I give you! And if you're just fishing for compliments, then say so and I'll be nice! And I'm not being silly - if I do something I'm proud of, I will call people over and say "Look what I did! Isn't it awesome?" not "what do you think of [my geranium garden]?" or whatever. Geranium, Pelargonium, tomayto tomahto....

Next up, is the age old "I put something out on the Internet, how on earth was I supposed to know that anyone could access it?" rant. so I started a blog in 2006, and 've become rather fond of it I've considered making a new one and using fake names and writing fictitious stuff to throw people off my true identity and blah blah blah, but I just don't want to. I like this blog.

I accept the fact that I'm putting things out there that can be quite personal, and at the same time I don't often write anything that I wouldn't say out loud. This blog is not a secret look into the inner workings of my mind. Those are mostly private and occasionally shared with very close friends, if I ever get around to acknowledging them in the first place. I try and avoid talking about people much if they don't ok it first and if I do I try and avoid using names or too many details that could 'expose' them.

Fair enough. At the same time, I like my privacy. I deal with a lot of different people on a daily basis and a lot of that is in a vaguely professional context. I don't really want everyone I've ever met reading about what I do on my weekends. You follow?

And so I was checking out my statcounter history this morning to find that someone had used a comment that someone who reads my blog had left on facebook (which is fast becoming the bane of my existence) and used it to google my blog.

If you want to read my blog and you know me in real life, then you should know that while I don't broadcast the URL from the rooftops, it's not really a big secret. So why not just ask me? Let me know that you're reading this/ want to read this? It's only polite. There's not much you'll get from here that you wouldn't get from a normal conversation with me anyway, but I think that 'sneaking around' trying to find someones blog is akin to trying to read someone's diary, which is totally dumb when I would have given you the address anyway.

What do you guys think? Are you ok with people you know reading about you? Or do you keep your identity top-secret?

When I grow up

I want to be Neko Case...




I'm all out of words, been applying for funding all day and I probably won't get it because I skipped a degree and therefore have all the beurocrats scratching their heads in frustration over which box to tick...

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!

I suck at chess

From time to time I cycle between narcolepsy (I have friends who can verify this after I fell asleep on a beach, in a car, on a chair, on floor several times during one weekend) and insomnia. I think a lot of this is stress-based, when I am stressed I just don't sleep, but prefer lying in bed paying out worst-case scenarios across my ceiling (I stuck glow-in-the dark stars up there too, but without my contact lenses all I can see if a greenish-yellow haze).

Last week, while I was really battling with insomnia, I downloaded a chess application to my phone and decided to pass those very long 2am-6am hours playing against my phone. I lost. Badly. And continued to lose. I had it set on easy, but I swear that thing is like the chess grandmaster thing like that AI program that beat the real chess master and really freaked out everyone! It's been a long time since I played chess, and the time during which I was any good at strategizing only really lasted about 3 months as nobody around me really plays it, but still!

As the days passed I felt my playing improve and I lasted longer into each game before quitting in a huff, but I still couldn't beat it. The insomnia worsened as I couldn't sleep without paying at least one game at night, which often stretched into several hours of battling a stupid cellphone app. One day I pulled out an old chess board and set up the game on there - I found being able to move pieces around in real life made strategizing easier - and did quite well until I made one tiny little mistake and the machine totally destroyed me!

By the end of last week I was exhausted and jittery and drinking WAY too much coffee and still losing. And we had to head off on field trip with a bunch of undergrads. To be honest, it was an easy trip, with 3 lecturers, the two of us and about 20 students. The lecturers stayed in chalets and we stayed in a tent to keep an eye on the kiddies.

Things I learned:

1. I am getting old/growing up. While this group of students was more immature than most, I found myself feeling increasingly different from them - the good old alone-in-a-crowd feeling.
2. I really cannot handle being around people all the time anymore. I ended up taking a walk at 1am on the Saturday night just to have breathing space.
   Although the men's showers are way cleaner than the ladies (for once) it is not advisable to sneak in and use them in case a bunch of men decide to queue outside your shower stall and discuss their personal lives.
3. Taking a random hike without students attached is a lot of fun!
4. My sleeping bag, while largely waterproof, lets water in around the zip.
   It rained, the tent leaked, I woke up with a soaking pillowe and wet feel, but a remarkably dry torso!
5. My new camera is totally awesome and I'm finally getting the hang of it (bear in mind this was first real opportunity to take it out and play around with the settings) although I have a LONG way to go!
6. The students who appear to be self-sufficient and enthusiastic in class are actually extremely annoying, particularly if they include a pair of severely over-competitive siblings.

Anyway here are some of my photos from the weekend. nothing too exciting but better than another weekend in the city!

A lizard, because I can! This little guy was adorable, maybe about 5cm long -including the tail! I'm totally saving up for a macro lens!

A frog, i don't know what the commong name is, but he was very cute. It was ouring with rain and a student who had caught him let him go and I dashed out for literally 5 seconds and caught him and ended up soaked - it looked like I had jumped into a swimming pool rather than just stepping outside!

A pretty view with a river running between two koppies

A fig tree, doing some pretty awesome weird stuff on a cliff.

A photo of Luke taking a photo. The students are being industrious.

Playing around because I could.

I have a vague idea that this is a Pelia something-or-another fern. We've always called it the cute fern because it's pretty adorable! By the end of the first day the students were calling it that too!

a caterpillar the size of a large rodent. It was HUGE! We thought it was a rat caught in a tree at first. We saw several of them on this trip, but I think the first one was the coolest. AMinly because I saw it first!

A very cool swallow nest with different coloured mud.

Our intrepid students returning from a collecting expidition in the big scary grassland!

Does anyone else see a face in the rocks?

Playing at the river. I didn't take my tripod that day and ended up balancing my camera on my lap to try keep it steady. Not fantastic, but I got the effect I was going for whch makes me happy!

The coolest classroom in the world!

When music fades away in the roar

I am furious.

To put this in perspective, while I was away my supervisor called and pretty much insisted that I attend this conference. He said it would all be organised, that I could wait until I got home to do the paperwork and that everything would be fantastic. There was a university vehicle, so I wouldn't even have to worry about getting there, and so on and so forth.

OK, fine. I didn't want to do it, but I agreed eventually, realising that it would be good experience, and I've never done a proper presentation at a conference, only presented a poster, which is tedious and time-consuming and all-out horrible.

I haven't been able to track down the guy who will be driving there tomorrow, so today I went and got his phone number from his supervisor and tried to get in touch. No answer.

To put this in context, these people are the type that I think are very insecure and possibly unpopular way back in high school or something. They feel the need to develop an image of being 'cool' and they do so in the easiest way: they exclude other people. they are generally quite entertaining and as such the undergrad KIDS-es adore them, and they sue that to their advantage by shamelessly playing favourites. Amongst their peers they make sure that everyone knows what they are up to, and that everyone who is not a member of their little 'fan club' is quite aware that they aren't invited.

I'm sure if they weren't so desperate to feel adored they would be pretty nice - on several occasions on various trips I have spent time with them, and we usually get along really well, but the minute the trip is over and we're back in our labs they act as if we've never met. I refuse to hero-worship people who I don't find as funny as they think they are, or as 'cool' as they try to be. I left high school 6 years ago and I was glad to wipe my hands of the politics and mind games. I have great friends and we have fun, but I will NEVER try to exclude anyone (and if I do, please slap me or something!) unless there is a very good reason.

The whole cliqueyness of the situation drives me nuts, and as such I just plain avoid people like that, but, unfortunately when you work on similar stuff you end up running into each other from time to time.

Anyway I finally managed to ask the conference organiser if she knew how many people were going to be travelling in the university car, as it had also been volunteered to take people from the airport to the conference - a meagre 4 or so hour drive. She replied that my name was not on the list, and that the car is full. so now, THE DAY BEFORE I've had to shuffle plans and organise to take my car down, and then come back the day before I was planning on leaving so I won't have to leave my car in the middle of nowhere.

I'm not angry because they've excluded me once again. to be honest I expect it from them. I'm not angry that I have to make another plan, I rarely claim anything that I spend on my work, and I paid for my last conference myself because I didn't have the energy to do all the paperwork, so I WILL be claiming back fuel for this trip. It's not even that I'll miss out on a cool talk about tree frogs.

What really upsets me is that I had to find out from a complete stranger what the people downstairs from me are doing. They didn't even bother to ask me, or tell me or anything. If it wasn't for the organisers being really nice in scheduling my talk early so that I can leave, I would actually cancel my attendance right now. And now I get to look forward to driving somewhere completely new to arrive in the dark and to leave less than 24 hours later.

The bonus is that while I only have a skeleton of a talk right now, I don't feel nervous anymore. The people there are going to be the same cliquey 'family' as I always encounter (I know a few of them personally) and to be quite honest, I don't care what they think of me.

I just want this to be over.

What a wonderful world...

Yip, another day, another random song stuck in my head... And for some reason, lately it's been songs that I haven't heard in years! I wonder how it all works, how DO songs get stuck in your head? And how does your brain decide which song to torture you with?

I ended up erdoing all my analyses yesterday, not as efficiently as I would have iked, as after 5pm facebook becomes available here (it's blocked before that) and I ended up chatting to an old friend from high school. It was really cool to find out about what she's been up to, it turns out that I'm not the only girl out there who has refused to grow out of the tomboy/klutzy stage and who can actually change a tire! And she's doing really niteresting research, which makes me kind of jealous.

Anyway I'm starting to panic about this conference. I don't usually mind public speaking, becasue I learned how to get over the jitters: it's FUN to give talks if you can get so excited about your subject matter that you desperately want to tell people about it.

See my problem here?

And I still have to: organise how the heck I'm getting to the conference tomorrow, pack, organise diving equipment and deliver it to Luke (this includes buying one or two things and finding all the stuff all around my house), get my car cleaned (I always feel guilty leaving a dirty car at home), buy seasickness tablets and actually rpepare for the conference.

So I'm going to go and try to harness my panic into productiveness!

Man I need a holiday!

And a big bout of irresponsibility!

I want to go to Fiji!

So the last post was cut short by Luke who very kindly phoned (from about 200 metres away) to remind me to go to a seminar. It was given by a guy who recently finished his masters and wet to work for the WWF in Fiji! And now I'm desperate to go there!

And my supervisor is a fruitcake...

and now that the piece of equipment that was giving me trouble is fixed, something else is broken, so I'm not sure when I'll be leaving Joburg. The most frustrating part is that I can't decide what I feel about the whole situation - I was frustrated as anything and really want to get going until the equipment was fixed, when suddenly I really didn't want to leave tomorrow.
I know that I'll miss my friends like crazy, but I also know that once I'm there and settled in I'll be happy as well and then I won't want to come home. Who knows...

Here are some pictures from my trip to Jersey. I know that it's totally unrelated, but I haven't posted photos for a long long time, so I figured I might as well now!


This is an adorable rabbit that I met while waiting for a bus one day. This was shortly after a random car screeched to a halt to rescue a duckling from the side of the road and move it further away from an impending doom of squishedness. I was really touched by the people's concern, but as I had just finished a 10km hike along cliff paths in a little over 2 hours (after a whole morning of running around, no lunch and in blazing sun, when all I had was a single Smint!)

The side of a castle. Doesn't it make you want to go and do some exploring (in true Enid Blyton style)?

A lizard. I fell down some stairs to get some not-fantastic shots of my first wild reptile in Jersey. They were really cute, and two of them had an awesome encounter where they circled and showed off and it was really awesome. I don't know if the tour group that I held up thought so ...(I was doing the real touristy thing with my dad that day, rather than my normal taking the bus to somewhere obscure and hiking randomly around the countryside).

I was desperate to visit this lighthouse and finally managed to squeeze it in with a short geocaching stop on the way, to run down to the base, take a picture and sprint back up the rather long hill to the bus stop. Father was still in tow (and might have outrun me slightly. Bearing in mind that this was on the same day that I fell down stairs chasing a lizard, and the day after a pretty long and brink hike, I feel justified in blaming the leftover lactic acid at this point).

I like taking pictures of fishermen, but in their absence I will make do with a canoeist/kayaker.

A graveyard in St Helier, that hasn't had the grass cut or the plants trimmed or anything in years. They like thinking of it as a nice little oxygen source or something. I thought it was more beautiful in its overgrown-ness than the usual neatly trimmed cemeteries. It was peaceful.
I think they kept pigeons here.
A 'labyrinth' - not quite creepy in the Pan's labyrinth style, but very pretty. I got the feeling that a lot of brides-to-be want to have their picture taken here. Although the ground leading up to it was kind of soggy so they might change their minds...
The view from another rather long (although not so brisk) cliff-path expedition. I loved the fact that you can go almost the whole way around the island without using the roads, and the paths are really well maintained with lots of benches, and grids over slippery spots and things. I did get very lost and in a patch of stinging nettles at one stage, so the signposting could use some help, but otherwise I loved it!
A boat. There were a lot of them. I thought this one was cute though! The tide goes out ridiculously far, so most of my pictures of boats are scary and sad ones of tons of boats lying on the bottom of the harbours, so it was nice to find that I actually had a picture of a floating boat!

lizard woes

So on Friday, some of the honours student's lizards started getting sick. One of them died that day and another died on the weekend. I offered to help with deworming them, because we know for a fact that they ahve worms, and that they've been under a lot of stress lately. The fantastic vets here decided that as I've helped with deworming before I could do it all alone, and pretty much said that as much as they were delighted to help, they didn't actually want to DO anything.

I wasn't happy about the whole sitiation, but as it happened, I had a really busy week last week and a killer headache on friday, so I went I hadn't been down to see them until this morning. In the meantime I'd checked the dosages and asked a bunch of different vets for advice on how much to administer and how to give it to them and side effects and all that stuff, so I was feeling slightly more confident about the whole situation. When I got down to the unit this morning I was completely stunned by the condition of the animals. I measured them about 2 weeks ago and they were all healthy and full of nonsense and wriggling and in good shape. This morning one of them had nasty lesions all over himdelf and another two were barely breathing and thin and dehydrated. I disinfected them and tried to give them water, but it wasn't helping, so I tried to call the vets, but they didn't answer their phones and I started to panic. I can honestly say I ahve never seen lizards looking this bad before. I knew that they wouldn't make it until tomorrow if I didn't do something, and as much as I knew exactly what to do, I didn't have a)the ethical clearance (if you can believe that! I have no clearance therefore it should just die) and b) i didn't have the stuff I needed. So I did the only thing I could think of and took them to the zoo.

It was awful! Firtly there was complete chaos as they were deworming anacondas and one of them had bitten a zoo-keeper and there was blood everywhere and the snakes smelled bad and it was just complete havoc. The snakes were cute in a way though! It was just really awful becasue the vets agreed with me that the lizards were in a complete mess and might not survive, and I felt embarrassed that I'd let them get to such a state. I like to think that the people at the zoo know me well enough to know that I look after my animals properly, but I felt really guilty to be associated with such sick lizards.

On the other hand I know poeple who would just let the animals be euthenased or let them die rather than look like they weren't looking after them properly. I only realised later that I wasn't really obligated to do anything, but the thought of leaving them like that made me feel sick and furious with myself for even having that thought. The fact is that they're not my test subjects, and I have very little to do with them, but I caught most of them, and as such I feel responsible.

They're the honours student's responsibility, and to his credit, I checked the unit thoroughly and the tanks are pristine and the rest of the lizards are fine, so he's off the hook. He's done a pretty good job, but unfortunately we aren't vets and there are limits to what we can do. The only issue is that he had noticed that they weren't quite normal alst week, but he didn't have the experience to do anything about it. But considering the fun and games I've been having with the vets here, there's not much that he could have done. Which leaves me at war with the university vets who evidently couldn't be bothered to look after sick animals.

Back on track - well sort of...

I decided to stop lying around feeling sorry for myself, and I went to the zoo this morning (having slept for a good 14 hours last night). It was hard, they've changed my frogs into bigger tanks, which is theoretically nicer for them, although they can dehydrate quite easily if they aren't sprayed enough, and now I can't clean tanks without a spotter (someone to watch for escaping amphibians while I clean). The openinng is just far too big for me to control what's going on. I was mildly annoyed by the whole situation - firstly I was supposed to go in on Wednesday and today to help with treatments, but they seem to have rescheduled without telling me. That's a relief as I wasn't able to do very much at all on Wednesday, so I'm quite glad I didn't let them down.

What annoyed me even more than being out of the loop, is that I was there to move frogs into tanks on Sunday and I decided (and was confirmed by the volunteers there - who are the people who actually do all the husbandry) that the big tanks, despite all the niceness of having more space were completely impractical in terms of husbandry and keeping humidity relatively constant. then on the first day that I wasn't tehre the higher-ups who have very little contact with the animals and the day-to-day handling of them made a decision without asking any of us or even listening to the little volunteers (who argued as hard as they could). They also put a bunch of frogs from different tanks together, which is bad as far as I'm concerned as a bunch of them are developing lesions and we're pretty sure they're contagious.

It's not my place to make decisions, but at the same time, it really annoys me that nobody even asked the people who are involved what their opinions were. I just hope that the frogs don't have to suffer, so I hope that I am wrong.

On a happier note, some of the big geckos laid eggs a while ago, and I hadn't known that one of the staff had put them in vermiculite and one of them hatched! It's the cutest baby gecko ever! It's so so so adorable! The whole time we were cleaning tanks this morning we'd occasionally rush over to the baby gecko tanks and start going "awwww!" it's really cute! And the other eggs are also about to hatch, we were holding them up to the lights to see the developing geckos and it's so cool!

And I'm going ice-skating again on Tuesday! I went on Monday with Luke and Duncan and Candice and it was awesomely fun, so on Tuesday Lara and I and whoever else we can scrounge up are going to go for half-price skating night! I'm glad because every time I skate I think to myself that I should go more often, and then I don't go for years and years... I can only go forwards and a little bit backwards now, hardly any of the cool stuff I used to do. But it's still fun, and I lvoe ti and I'm going to go more often. Really!

And I've spent most of the day at university and actually got some work done! I'm about to smash my computer for being uncooperative, but I'm making progress! Now I'm going to go home and sleep until tomorrow!

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!

Zooing

So I've been really quiet lately because I seem to be spending more and more time at the zoo these days! First of all some relatives came out from the UK to visit family, and I organised a special tour for my uncle. He's blind, so most activities are really bornig for him, but fortunately I got my friend Elaine, who works at the zoo, to arrange for him to touch a whole bunch of animals, to get an idea of what the look like. She did an incredible job, and it was very special to see how touched he was to realise that monkeys have hands!

This got me involved at the zoo again (Luke and I have semi-lived there for about 4 years now, including Luke's masters being based on zoo animals), as I hadn't spent too much time there recently with fieldwork and work and everything else. There are curretly two baby monkeys being hand-reared, so I started spening lots of time looking after them to give Althea (their 'mom') some time to get her other work done. Then, about 10 days ago, a whole bunch of animals from Madagascar were confiscated from the airport and put into quarantine at the zoo. By a whole bunch I mean several hundred! It was insane, the zoo wasn't really equipped to handle so many animals in a wuarantine that was designed for the occasional animal being sold or bought or exchanged, and the people who work there don't have any experience with Madagascan animals so trying to figure out husbandry for several hundred animals ni pretty bad condition was really really hard work! On top of it all they had to contend with me jumping up and down begging to be allowed to help! Fortunately (for my sake) they let me help out, but this quickly became a large part of my day. Feeding 600 animals takes a long time, and I try to help as much as possible so that the vets have time to treat the sick ones.

It's been really awesome to see some of the most stunning animals in the world. I've fallen in love with the little tree frogs, the big tomato frogs, the big day geckos (and the small day geckos) the huge panther chameleons and all the other incredible animal there. But at the same time I would dearly lovfe to remove the kneecaps of everyone involved in taking these animals out of their natural habitat, packing them in tiny little boxes and sending them voerseas to be sold as pets. It makes me so angry. I understand why people would want these animals as pets, they're very cool. But to take them away from where they should be... I just don't get it.

A long time ago I made a decision to never buy an animal that wasn't bred in captivity. Before that I decided to never ever buy an animal from a petshop. This was even before I refused a job at a petshop that sold animals. My point is, yes, that chameleon in the petshop looks really cool. But do you really want a pet that has been through so much? An animal that makes it to a petshop is probably among the 20 or so percent that survived a trip in horrendous conditions. I don't understand people. Really, animals are way cooler!

a long long road

I was doing some work on my proposal today and I realised that the somewhat 'leisurely (i.e. I can do it mostly alone if need be and manage everything) pace I was planning on for my proposal was a bit... awful becasue it'll require about 5 years of field work, not counting all the analysing and writing up time. So now I'm trying to squeeze more than one project into each field session. It's mostly doable, mainly because the nature of a lot of my work is lab-based. I'll probably do it AT the field site because test-subjects are in plentiful supply and I don't need more permits that way. So if I do the actual field work component, while running experiments in the 'lab' might just be able to do the entire degree in the expected 4 years. The problem is I FINALLY saw the point of my whole study as well as figuring out exactly why it is as original as I need to make it really cool. But to do it in that way means cutting out a few sections that I really really want to do. So it looks like my rationale needs broadening once again.

I worked today. As it happened I had to switch shifts to make my boss's life easier and ended up not workingwith LAra, which is really sad because it means I'll never work with her again. She decided now to insist on working my last shift with me. We're going to have an awesome party behing the counter in 2 weeks, including balloons and party hats and making a lot of noise. We'll probably even do a screening of Kung Pow just for old time's sake!

Which makes me sad. A part of me can't wait to leave. I've been working weekends since I started university, so basically I haven't had a weekend for almost 5 years, and the the thought of being able to wake up on a saturday and not have any commitments is amazing! But I'll also miss the weird customers and the crazy jokes and all the fun we have. And the money of course, but I'm not too fussed about that. It means I might not always have spending money, but I think that that won't really be a priority once I'm staying in the bundu with my lizards for a chunk of every year. And my petrol will be paid for then which cuts a nice chunk out of my budget!

Anyway that's about it. My supervisor went off on holiday for a week on the spur-of-the-moment, which annoyed me. I'm thinking seriously about asking someone to cosupervise me. I know the perfect person, who is already helping me a lot, and if he says no I have someone else who is helping me a whole lot, so there shouldn't be a problem getting someone to agree. The only thing is getting my supervisor to think it was his idea. I think it's doable, but I'll have to see.

So that's what's going on here at the moment. I'm going to go and get some sleep now. I've worked hard today and I think I deserve it!

minus a brother, plus a sister and family of Mediterraneans

so Friday I didn't even go into wits. Instead I delivered wine to the reception venue, then went to the church to practise walking down the aisle in my shoes. Halfway down the aisle I thought 'Hey, I can DO this!' and took a confident step, only to slip and hold onto a pew to keep from falling. the guys polishing the floors managed to keep straight faces which was impressive! after that I went makeup shopping - I wear makeup quite often, but I hardly ever wear heavy makeup and the colours I needed I didn't have and so on. From there I had my toenails done, my nails done (they are currently about 2 inches long and I have gouged my eyes from trying to remove my contact lenses), and my eyebrows done. All this while rushing home to help pack cars with all my brother's stuff to take to the new house and battling with the 'I'm not at wits!' guilt.

After all that I went home and collapsed, waiting for 4:30 to arrive so I could go and collect Carla's honeymoon luggage. My brother decided to move some more stuff accross and I joined him. their house is HUGE! It's a double story with 3 big bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (2 baths AND a big shower and a whole load of other rooms. from there we went to get the luggage from a highly emotional Carla and then my family (my parents, my brother and me) went out for dinner.

This morning I rushed out early and got my hair done, amid frantic phonecalls from Carla and then calm and then frantic phonecalls... they did my hair really nicely, so of course it rained like crazy and I had to do the whole jersey-above-head-rush-to-car thing, rush home, do my makeup, have lunch (at 11:30) and then go off to Carla's house to change and help her get ready and so on.

The wedding (after a good 3 hours of preparations) was really beautiful. I didn't trip or slip on my way up the aisle, my brother did a happy-dance (literally) when he saw Carla, they both burst into tears in the middle of the first hymn, she cried in the middle of the vows so he had to pull faces at her to get her through them , and the 2-year old flowergirl/ringbearer who had flat-out refused to walk down the aisle or sit still at all at the rehearsal, sat on the altar cushions quite happily eating the jellytots that had been hidden in her basket.

From there we went to the reception, where all the trouble started. We were having photos in the garden, but as it had been raining we kept getting stuck when the heels on our shoes sank. I had a list of all the photos that needed to be taken, but it turned out that the photographers didn't so they took mine and sent me off to fetch petals. In the meantime I was needed in pictures and got yelled at and then Carla yelled at me for not organising people for photos because I had no list. When I said that the photographers had it she got even angrier and kept screaming that it wasn't my list, it was theirs. And that ruined my day a lot.

The reception was also really annoying. For starters, I was at the main table,which is a long table where you only sit down one side, facing the room. I was almost on the end, next to my dad (not exactly renowned for talking at family functions) and the best man, whose girlfriend was 2 tables away. Every time there was a speech the video people put these BRIGHT lights on us and the photographers were everywhere. It really annoyed me. Like after the first dance it was the father-daughter/bridal party dance and I was dancing with the best man (neither of us knew what we were doing) and we kept bumping into the video guy. It was so irritating!

I'm sorry, but I think a beautiful day was slightly marred by the need for 2 photographer and a vido guy. I have big problems with people who spend so long trying to save bits of memories that they don't actually live them, and I felt that that was what was happening tonight. That and getting screamed at by my new sister-in-law was fantastic. She was still 'not speaking' to me by the time that they left. which really upset me.

The other thing that upset me was the way that everyone thought I'd had my makeup donw professionally. When I said I had done it they got all shocked. I felt like saying 'YES! I KNOW WHICH END OF THE LIPSTICK TO USE!' Just because I don't plastr on makeup like that doesn't mean I can't...

and not I'm tired and grumpy and I'm going to bed.

Growing up

I was going through old photos yesterday afternoon. I realised that a big part of growing up is losing things. Yesterday was my brother's birthday, his last birthday at home considering he's getting married next month. He was hardly at home at all.

I found an old photo of me holding a lizard. I was about 4 years old. I remember chasing them a lot (they lived under our wisteria which grew around the front of our house) but I don't remember catching more than one or two. It was in a pile of photos of old friends who I used to spend all my time with. I see two of them about once a year, but even that is awkward. It makes me wonder how long the friendships I have right now will last.

I went to the vet yesterday. I used to work there (as a potential vet-student) and loved it more than any other place in the world. It was nice, I had a long chat with the vet who has been incredibly supportive of me in all my studies. I also realised that I won't be hanging out with the vets during surgery again.

I went to a church function last night. It was fun, we all dressed up (except me and my friend Sarah who read the 'smart-CASUAL' on the invite and wore jeans). when I was youger I was super-involved in the church but over the last few years I've pulled more and more away frlom it. I was wondering why, I had a lot of close friends there at one stage. Then last night Brian had an eye-patch that was too small and gouging his eye so he decided to move it to where there might be a third eye, so I suggested the top of his head cosidering the whole 'pineal eye' thing. Someone turned around and attacked me verbally because I was 'taking evolution into account.'

It wasn't that they were uncomfortable with the idea, I'm used to that (although the general response is 'lets not go there' which really annoys me). It was the fact that someone I'd never even met before about a week ago felt comfortable speaking to me like that. There was no opening for me to explain what I meant or the fact that I am an EVOLUTIONARY biologist which means that believing in evolution is as much a part of my identity as the fact that I was sitting at a church. Instead some little kid who's just left school and has never really looked at evolution felt comfortable giving me a 'talking to' about it.

Just to round off the incident when I left the little group to find someone to talk to who wouldn't attack me and not allow me to answer them, one of my friends who had seen the whole thing took me to one side and asked me to be more 'sensitive' about the way I talk about evolution.

Anyway the evening ended with dinner and watching 3/4 of the 'Phantom of the Opera' (scratched DVD, not mine) and little creationist-girl had to leave because she thought it would be too scary for her. That's right. Don't look at things that scare you.

I'm tempted to throw the whole 'growing up' thing out the window and follow her around muttering 'Darwin! Darwin!'

But I know that the only response that I'll take is to avoid the church functions in future. Because that's what I always do.

Good thing I have a lawyer...

I may just be overreacting as usual, but I think I must just kill my supervisor by the end of the year.

For starters I got to wits this morning after a very busy time of trying to find my brother's fiance's sisters house (she told me left instead of right on the phone and I got really lost in a suburb I didn't even know existed until today). I'm also not feeling too good yet, although I was ok-ish until about 2 or so, but being sick always makes me a bit more emotional than usual.

It was fine until I went to go see him. I got to see Vanessa again, which was fantastic! We all thought she'd be moving to a different department, but it turned out she's staying! It's really awesome and she has her own room, which is really nice but a bit on the dusty side. A temporary situation of course.

Anyway, just to clarify, the last time I went to my supervisor, I outlined what I wanted to do and he said it was all fantastic, but too big for a masters, hence the Big PhD Decision. All fine. So today I went to find out what it is that I'm actually supposed to be doing (there's no structure, which is horrible!) and he pretty much said that I don't really have a project outline, gave me a bunch of ideas and then pretty much questioned whether what I wanted to do would actually fit in or not. So basically the last time he just said yes to everything to force me into a PhD.

I'm not sure what's worse, the fact that I know have to prove what I want to do to the person who has already okayed it twice, or the fact that I have to get through 4 years without throttling the guy.

Thank you for smoking

I slept for almost 10 hours last night and woke up feeling relatively human! It was fantastic!

Anyway when I got to work I found out that it was just me and Matt2, with about an hour of Joey sitting with us after opening. It was so nice to sit and chat to her again, I really missed her and Lara while I was away!

The bonus about working with Matt, besides the fact that he's a really nice person, is that he works pretty much every day and so he's seen pretty miuch everything. Despite this, he's more than happy to let me pick the movie and to watch something again. That is really rare in a staff member, trust me!

So today we watched 'Thank you for smoking' which was brilliant! I don't know what was better, his amazing ability to shift his arguments and keep the opponents completely off balance, or the wqay in which he'd very reasonably allow his opponents to blow holes in their own arguments. It was very impressive and I think the writers deserve an oscar, although, considering the subject matter it's pretty unlikely.

It also brings me back to a topic which I've been quite interested in over the last few years. why is it that the tobacco industry is practically banned from any advertising at all, while adverts for alcohol are everywhere? When I was small, every movie would start with about 5 advrts of very tough guys climbing mountains and skydiving and then smoking. Fair enough, it puts ideas into children's head and so on and so forth. But a little while ago i was at a movie and we counted over 10 adverts for alcohol before the movie started. And I'm not talking beer. I'm talking whiskey and vodka type stuff.

If I was a parent, I would far rather have a teenage kid who smoked than one who drank that stuff.

I'm not saying that smoking is good. I'm just saying that if it's not ok to show an advert for it in any movie (and I'm delighted in the shift in perceptions regarding smoking over the last 10 years), why can you find adverts for alcohol everywhere, even in kiddies animated movies? Surely they should be restricted to movies that are R18, when they're actually applicable to the audience?

Just a thought.