Solitude

This is kind of how I'm feeling right now. I can't explain it, but at least now I know I took this photo for a reason!
So a few days ago I was chatting to someone who has become a pretty close friend over the space of about two days (I'm not even kidding, starting a friendship with an hour-and-a-half heart-to-heart is NOT who I am!) and we ended up discussing depression. When I was a teenager I was diagnosed with it and given the requisite little white pills. I took one. I think it may have been half of one, but I don't really remember. All I now is that I never took one again, I refused to live my life feeling like the world around me wasn't really real.

Anyway he said that when you're depressed the colours around you fade and the world seems dull and ugly. I didn't really think too much about it, except to remember a specific sunset that was beautiful, that didn't move me in any way emotionally although my intellectual side could admire it.

So this week, with the crazy hotbed-of-emotions that is the meat-market lab (can't really call it the primate lab now that it's being cohabited by a primatologist, mammalogist and me) coming to a rather unpleasant and yet necessary end last night, when I woke up this morning the world seemed a little bit duller. I did a very girly thing - put my head under my pillow and refused to face the day for a few more hours, and not because of exhaustion (although that helped).

And I've been gripey all day. The people around me have been so amazing, I have been patted on the back, sympathised with, bought chocolate, treated gently... and I just don't want to talk about it! I was amazed by the depth of response in some people, people who I never expected to get that angry on my behalf and yet who did. People who seemed to notice that something was up and treated me gently even though they had no idea why. People who pulled me aside and gave me sympathy without making a big scene (which I was dreading at one point).

I guess part of me wants to cry because I feel so much like I belong here, and I have a little family of colleagues who are so totally amazing. It makes me feel like I am worth more than that, I am worth waiting for, I am worth someone putting in the effort and making me feel special. And that makes the colours a little bit brighter and tomorrow morning I may just leave the safety and warmth of my bed a little bit earlier.

And going away on Saturday (if it happens - it seems like the vehicle I was taking has been hijacked by the maintenance guy who won't give it back...) well I'm looking forward to it. I'm an analytical person, I don't bury my emotions, I just generally don't feel things very strongly, which is why this whole situation hit me so hard - I was all crazy and quivery like a teenager and I had no idea how to react to the fact that I was feeling the proverbial butterflies - and I can't wait for some solitude to think everything through and sort it out in my own head.

I've been in the city for far too long, and as much as I will miss the lab like crazy, I think it's time for me to get back to the field.

This has been (by far) the most emotional I've ever been on here. I'm sorry, don't freak out! Here are some pictures I've been looking at to try and relax and breathe a little bit.

The little things that make me happy

So a few nights ago we ended up sitting on the roof of the building next to ours, drinking rather awful wine and starting at the Joburg skyline and it made me realise just how special everything is. So I figured I'd make a list of things that make me happy. It might help me to stop this weird urge I'm having to hug people lately... our lab is totally emotional at the moment, we're discussing feelings and stuff!

1. the lab: I know I don't really belong in the lab where I'm sitting, as I have a desk upstairs in the other lab, where I lived for almost four years, but at the moment I'm really enjoying the company and random academic discussions (and the coffee machine).

I got this sign from my supervisor who is leaving and clearing out his office. I think its so cool! I'm also starting to make my spot in the lab feel like my own, but putting up things like the sign and some old old floppy disks as well as infiltrating the primate toy collection with wire lizards...

This was my desk back in honours, which is the last time I had a pin-board (until now!). I loved that board so much! note the collection of travel-mugs so that I never had to be without my coffee (or tea in those days).

2. Random humour in everyday life. My dad took me out for dinner on my birthday and this was on the menu. know it's immature but I had a good chuckle when I saw that "Uncle Nev's T-bone" was available (sorry for picture quality, dim light, cellphone camera...).

3. The crazy zoo people (who I don't see often enough!). Last time I spent a significant amount of time there they let me in with some baby jackals. They were SO cute! Almost like puppies but with small feet and ears instead of big floppy ones like dogs have.

4. My job (well the official one anyway). I can never get over just how lucky I am to work somewhere where they don't fire me for going away so much! I generally enjoy interacting with the people, playing with the animals and trying to get the credit card machine to work. This is the awful swipey thing for manual transactions. I hate it! But it works so I should stop complaining!

5. The gym (and the crazy people there). I'm still loving the whole exercise thing and for some reason I'm running more often than cycling these days. the sign in the change room is... adjustable... this is the handiwork of a friend of mine...

6. My menagerie at home. This is Max being cute. It's hard to believe he's almost 7!

And of course number seven: in a few days time I get to go away from the awful awful traffic and noise and pollution to have a distinct purpose in life on a day-to-day basis and get back to the real hands-on fieldwork. Which as much as I'm dreading it this time, I also just can't wait! And of course the fact that I hate to go away is because I'm so lucky to have so much here to come back to!

It's freezing!!!

So on Friday Oliver came over to give the lizard treadmill a bit of a service - I was planning on boarding up a few of the holes that the lizards can escape through (I have done a stunning job with cardboard, paper and duct tape, even a few band-aids and some sellotape in one corner, and checking that everything is connected where it's supposed to be so I won't have any more nasty surprises.

 

What I didn't bank on was the fact that Oliver is... well... Oliver! He's one of those people who likes to make things and fix things and think up new ways of making and fixing things. He's one of those people who takes pride in (and I think enjoys) doing a job well. I trust his ability when it comes to making and fixing things, and as the guy whol built the treadmill is at a new job and I don't want to bother him unneccessarily, I have no qualms about him taking it apart and checking up on the mechanism (one of the components broke last year and I had him on the phone for about an hour talking me through it all, so that when I found a friendly engineer I was able to explain what was happening).

 

So anyway, after about five hours the treadmill and housing were dismantles, we'd made some progress but it was shaping up to be a bigger job that we'd realised. To tell the truth, although I was exhausted and kept yewning, I had a lot of fun. I learned that you get something called a 'junior hacksaw' which is basically a tiny hacksaw which is totally adorable and makes me wonder if there is a junior lumberjack club out there, where you get a magazine and a mini-tool every month. It was awesome to spend some time with him too, we used to study together and so I'd see him every day, and when he moved to a different campus to do masters we kind of kept in touch but hardly at all, and it was great to sit and chat and generally catch up.

 

Once it started getting cold and dark he went off on his way and I went off to see a movie. Wolverine was sold out which sucked so we saw a spy-thriller conspiracy movie which isn't my usual fare, but the ending was very clever and I enjoyed the evening. I was quite sad that we couldn't go to a later showing of Wolverine (although knowing me and X-men, I would be dyeing my hair weird colours as a result - again) but I had work in the morning and on pay-day weekend I have to be awake and alert and so on at the vet.

 

It wasn't the busiest shift I've ever worked, and the credit card was working (mostly), but the people never stopped coming and on top of it all it was Brian's first shift and he was trying to figure out the credit card machine and the computer system and it was insanely busy! He did really well, but occasionally I had to kick him off the computer and take over when it got really bad, and fortunately I had taken over when the credit card machine stopped working so I was able to sort it out and do a manual thing without him feeling too bad. It also meant there was always someone free to answer the phone (which never stops) and he had to handle the two worst customers, so I figure that as a baptism of fire goes, it was pretty intense and he coped amazingly well.

 

From there it was off to visit Jo for about ten minutes (there was some gossip and girl-talk required and she'd phoned earlier and I hung up on her mid-sentence...) and then off to Oliver's house for treadmill-round-two. Turns out his dad (who has all the tools and the workshop and stuff) was going out, so there was nothing for us to do, so he made me an amazing lunch and we basically hung out and watched TV and chatted until I went off to guitar-hero and pizza evening.

 

The evening kind of didn't end... I ended up crashing in the spare bedroom and waking up feeling like I'd swallowed cottonwool, really needed a shower and had pulled a muscle in my stomach from giggling. 

 

And now I'm off to make lunch for an early mothers day as I'm probably away for the real thing. And then I'll probably end up visiting La at work so that we can discusss everything that happened last night and giggle over it all again!

The guilt!

So last night I was tasked with finishing our ADSL cap - this happens every month, we have a 1-gig cap and my family is so paranoid about running out that they never use it and I generally get told to use up half of it in an hour flat.

 

And so I started lookung up cruelty-free products. I have had a sneaking suspicion about my facewash for a while, so I changed over when I ran out to one that had "NOT TESTED ON ANIMALS" emblazoned all over it, and to be honest I like it better than my old one anyway. I always figured that testing on animals is so not cool when it ocmes to things like cosmetics and shampoo. I eman really, I'm sure you can find a opoor student and pay them to review your products? It would cost more but you'd get more feedback than from say, a rabbit!

 

So I found a few websites listing the culprits.

And

Oh

my

gosh!

 

I know a few of the big names, Maybelline, L'Oreal and so on, but I had no idea how many of the other smaller brands fit into the bigger companies! And how hard it it to find some things here - I had never though of checking up on my contact lens solution for example! I know that shampoo is a biggie and I hate to admit this, but I switched brands a little while ago and never thought to check.

 

I think I'm safe on that one, but I'm going to go look at the bottle now...

 

I feel like a bad person!

Wow!

Oh my gosh, today was weird... So I rushed in to university his morning, stressing out because my meeting with my supervisor had been postponed from yesterday to this morning, the traffic was terrible and I was lecturing honours students after lunch and I wanted to go over everything again.

When I got to the lab it was deserted (even the cricket was MIA) so I dumped my stuff and went in search of the elusive supervisor - it's his last day employed by the university and so it was kind of important. As it turns out I got to his office just after he sent me an email asking me to go and see him - he was about to leave, so it worked out pretty well! After that I went downstairs and started some coffee and settled down to work, which lasted for about two minutes before people started banging on the door asking for my lab mates. Five minutes after I got rid of one batch, the next would appear. Then one lab mate would appear and then leave just before the next person came to find them. It was most frustrating.

Then, once we were all settled in at the lab, drinking coffee and working (as you do), Candice arrived (not the usual Candice) to chat and visit. She used to sit at the desk I have claimed as mine now, and we don't get to see her much as she works at the zoo now and her office is really hidden away there. After she left, the other Candice arrived and went off with Luke for coffee and Megan and I ended up having a weird heart-to-heart about life and people and the universe and stuff. all this while I supposed to be stressing and doing last-minute prep for my lecture which was in about two hours at the point.

The lecture was OK, I wasn't stressed or panicky and i think that took a bit of the edge off my 'performance' I felt like the students were bored and not too interested until right at the end wen we got to the human behaviour examples, although Luke claims that it went well so I'm going to listen to him in order to maintain my sanity!

After that we ad a weird weird WEIRD conversation with Luke's supervisor who was giggling like a maniac because the cricket has moved into the office next-door to his and the post-doc in there is getting very irritated at the chirping! And Megan has to walk into the conversation when it got to discussing cup-sizes if you were to use a bra as a surgical mask. She missed the other part which I will not discuss other than to warn the innocent people out there to be VERY CAREFUL when google-searching obscure primate behaviour, such as punishment of juvenile vervet monkeys.

From there we got food as Luke was about to implode or pass out or something and we ended up talking about honours where Luke went through an Internet-game phase and played a game called Chuzzle incessantly, while I stood behind him yelling out instructions. We ended up playing it today and I'm not quite sure what the addicting factor was... from there we played Zuma and Bejewelled and Megan got very addicted to Bejewelled...

We also put in some YouTube-time watching bad performances in all the various forms of Idols/Pop Idols/American Idol which was funny and scary and just plain weird. And once I got a headache we stopped and played Bejewelled until it was time to go home.

It was a totally bizarre day!

Oh, and please can people out there help me. How do you (and I mean you personally, not convention) pronounce 'schnitzel'? It has been a topic for debate for quite some time!

feel a little strange but it's all right

So last night I went to gym again, and although I was very careful as I'm still slightly sick, it felt fantastic! I missed the routine and the sore muscles and all that stuff... I've also stopped the cough-syrup after I googled the active ingredients and found out that I was on a lovely mixture of antihistamines and uppers (i had been wondering why the pharmacist wanted to know if I had an addictive personality...).

 

And I woke up this morning feeling stiff and sore and significantly less sorry-for myself than I've been for the last few days. which is fantastic! I've also been gigging nonstop all day as Luke's supervisor - just across the passage has had his office invaded by a cricket which is SO loud that all of his meetings have involved people yelling to be heard over the single, tiny, bellowing cricket! It particularly funny when the Russian maintenance guy was trying to explain something in his rather strong accent with the cricket almost out-competing him for volume!

 

And Jenny sent the coolest plant home for my birthday! It's called a kudu lily, and I hope it's tougher than the last few pot-plants I've ha, because it's so cool! According to my intensive research over the last five minutes, the scientific name is Pachypodium Saundersii and it grows on rocky outcrops, flowering in Autumn.

 

I will try and take a photo later to post on here. In the meantime Luke will be caring for it while I am in the field, and I hope it will be happy and healthy for many years to come.

What's really going on (aka how do you miss people missing you?)

So after many posts of trying to avoid talking about real issues I've decided to tackle it head-on. After all the right attitude + a hammer generally leads to results in some form or another...

 

On top of my oh-so-exciting flu saga I'm feeling a bit miserable lately an I don't know why. I think a large part of it is that my body has become pretty accustomed to a daily endorphin rush from when I go to the gym and I haven't been since almost a week ago because I'm afraid of the repercussions if I go while I'm sick...

 

I'm also due to go off on fieldwork in less than two weeks, and that really messes with my head. You know when you go away for a while and people send you news? And its supposed to make you happy, but it makes you sad because it shows you that people don't stop living when you're not there. It's childish and silly and I always want people to be happy, but it sucks that they don't stop living when I'm not there. I remember the first time I went on fieldwork and everyone ad a board games evening without me, and I was devastated without knowing why.

 

And now I've done the whole fieldwork thing a bunch of times, and I love it and I know I'll be happy when I'm there and it'll be hard to come home, but getting my head in the game to get out there is the hard part. Right now I'm wandering around in a bit of a cough-syrup induced haze, trying to get all my permits and paperwork and equipment in order so that I can leave on time. At the same time in the back of my mind there is  that little voice that keeps telling me that I must stop worrying, because nobody here will miss me anyway.

 

It's really silly of me, but I guess it all stems from the original issue - the first time you go away for a long time it feels like a betrayal that people kept living without you. Then you get home and go nuts seeing people all the time and going out and doing things and then generally collapsing - the end of last year I got home and mostly hid in the lab prepping for the conference and going diving, but once I was officially home, I went nuts and ended up going out every night for almost a month (I think it was 26 days or something) and then I almost had a breakdown because as much as I had missed everyone and as much as I was enjoying spending time with people, I had just spent three months completely isolated (except for my lizards) with my closest neighbours a good half-hour drive away (it's quicker to walk, the roads are bad) and suddenly I was totally inundated with people.

 

The weirdest thing is that when I'm in the city, I feel like fieldwork is just a dream or a story that someone else has told me. The other day I remembered something that someone had told me that was a pretty funny story, and after hours of trying to figure out who had told me the story I realised that it was something that had happened to me! And when I'm there I feel like living in the city is all a dream. I guess having spent more than two decades there helps solidify it slightly more, but after a few weeks I wouldn't be able to tell you what my house or my bedroom looks like. I miss my friends and stuff, but I forget to miss them, unless something amazing happens and they aren't there for me to tell them about it.

 

But the problem is that the more you go off on long trips, the less of a big deal it is. There are no more goodbye parties or welcome home dinners, people forget where I am and I get invitations to things like movies when I am more than half a day's drive away. My friends stop checking up on me, I stop sending messages to them.

 

And when you're away so often, when you're home it isn't a big deal. People do stuff without you, not because they don't want you there, but because they don't think about you when the invitations go out. They forget to tell you exciting news because you aren't normally there to hear it.

 

The point of it all is that I'm rather solidly in the self-pity stage at the moment. I'm going away and i don't want to go because I will miss everyone, but at the same time does it matter because nobody will miss me. I don't know where I belong, because I'm so split between two places that neither is home. And life is horrible and nobody cares and I'm going to go sit on the couch and suck my thumb and cry, like the 4-year old I seem to turn into whenever I'm due to go away again. and on top of all of it I'm having boy-issues. Why now? Of all the times for this sort of thing to happen!

 

Don't mind me, I'll grow up in a few weeks when I have to fall down my first cliff-face of the day and the sun is shining and all I have to worry about is the nasty little lizard hiding under a rock... And I'll be happy, for a moment at least!

Bleh

So for the last few weeks everyone around me has been sick with the most horrible flu. I generally don't get sick too often (I replace illness with injury more often than not) and this time I fought hard against it with appropriate amounts of sleep, vitamin C, fruit and vegetables as well as regular exercise. it was a close call, but I was managing until I ended up standing outside in the freezing cold for hours waiting to vote.

 

On Thursday morning I woke up with a sore throat but I was otherwise fine, but lunchtime I was halfway through Leia's box of tissues (she was very kind to offer them regularly). for the record, she's just started her very own, very first blog, so please go check it out! She's putting tons of time and effort into it (and I think I might have given her the flu...). Anyway by Thursday night I was battling to breath and pretty much totally miserable.

 

Friday was pretty unpleasant, particularly because I had to teach fungi (according to the lecturer it's pronounced "fun_dje-eye") to my batch of first year kiddies. I could have persuaded someone to cover for me, but as I'm heading off on fieldwork before their next lab i wanted to say goodbye. It was very cute, when I finished giving them tons of advice for the rest of their labs (we do a little beginning-lab briefing session) i broke the news and they all said "awww" and seemed saddish. One of the nicer kids wasn't there which was sad, bit the one with a rapidly-developing attitude problem was absent, which made my life much easier!

 

They all worked merrily away and left after a few hours, most of them stopping to say goodbye and thank you to me, which was quite bizarre - this group has been the best first year lot I've had, but I have never pretended to care about them, and I'm pretty sure they're aware that I have no further influence on their marks! One girl ran over and hugged me and refused to let go, which was extremely awkward, as she's quite short and I'm rather tall, so I had a vice-like grip around my ribcage while she went on and on about her labs with me being the bright spot in her week. At the same time her friend, who was waiting for her, walked up to us and said "Can we leave now or are you two having 'a moment'?" I kept patting the kid on the back rather awkwardly until she went away.

 

I spent Saturday at the vet, trying to do my job but largely unable to talk. One of the regular clients came in, and i groaned inwardly - she's the one who loved to chat, and both vets hide from her. I was quite unfriendly, but I just couldn't handle making small-talk, when all I wanted was for her to go away so I could blow my nose. I was supposed to wait to be paid after my shift, but I just said goodbye to the vet on duty and went home, where I had some tomato soup and collapsed until the next morning. That was about 18 hours of sleep! I got up in the evening to get a hot-water bottle to put on my chest, and to take more flu-caps and med-lemon, but otherwise it was me, in bed, with a box of tissues on my pillow, a dustbin next to my bed for said tissues, and my trusty ipod which was pretty useless because my ears were blocked and I was almost totally deaf...

 

And by Sunday I was almost totally better, but with an awful cough and a voice somewhere between Macy Gray and Norah Jones... Fortunately Monday was a public holiday and I was able to watch a ton of movies at work, while getting some or other brand of cough syrup from the pharmacy next door - apparently it's highly addictive because something like 3 of the four ingredients are controlled substances, all I know is that it tastes bad enough to be something I will be more than happy to quit! Unfortunately it works so I have to live with it for a few more days!

I can't believe I did that!

So my Ipod is getting a bit on the full side, so I went through some of the backups I'd saved on there so I could get rid of some of it and save the space. I found all of my honours coursework assignments there which made for some nostalgia - particularly longing for, and missing, my old ability to write the biggest load of rubbish and make it sound good!

 

I went into one of my 3-day exam answers (basically for your exam you get given a topic and get three days to write an essay) and I opened one from a course that I did pretty well in. There, in the first line of the intro I found a typo:

 

"Tracking migration routes can be very time-consuming and expensive. Extrinsic markers suck as dye labels, tags or leg rings are time and energy intensive and depend on the recovery of marked individuals"

 

yes, instead of saying such as... I said that they suck! And of course spellcheck isn't the same as logic check...

In the spirit of not wanting to talk about what's actually going on

I was thinking this morning about how I should really be working on my lecture for next week, but I'm stuck at one point so I figured I'd do a search through my email and look for a memo I made a few years ago for one of the pracs which we're running tomorrow. I searched and Gmail came up with one result - a chat message from when I was in the field for the first time, two years ago. At the time my friend Ben was helping out and we were doing quite well, but a lot of bizarre things happened.

 

I thought you guys would enjoy seeing a little bit of what we might consider as normal...Here is an except of some of a conversation I had with Luke telling him about what was going on that week:

 

me: so did I tell you about this morning?

 Luke:   No...

me: for the first time in almost a week it wasn't raining, so we took all the traps we have and went off to the field
  proceeded to get pretty sunburned and caught 10 male lizards and 2 HUGE geckos
 

Luke: Cool!

 me: and then looked up to realise that the farm was on fire

 Luke: So what was the weird stuff that has happened?
  WHAT?!

 

me: this after the roof in the bathroom fell in and we got flooded yesterday

 Luke: Yes, I remember that... :D
  So, what happened?

 me: not the farmHOUSE, the grass and stuff

 Luke: Oh! LOL. OK then :)

me: but it was hot and windy and the fire was moving quickly and I was sitting working as fast as I could and then ben decided that the bakkie was going to get burned, so he hurtled down the hill and moved it
  and then got lost coming back so I thought he'd died

Luke: Sounds fun! Veld fires are scary! I remember that one in the Kalahari! That was unbelievable! It was so unreal!

me: I know! anyway I thought Ben had died, especially considering he was nearly attacked by a Mozambique spitting cobra last time we were in the field, and some kind of mamba today

Luke: Woah! You are NEVER coming on my field work! I'll get jinxed like him!

me: but he yelled until I answered and then followed my voice through all the trees, and we finished up and packed up and ran off to the car.  Which was not on fire...  and then I'd decided to take the ring road - it's bad and you need to use lowrange but at least the fire wouldn't be all OVER THE ROAD and Ben decided to drve us back through the fire  we nearly died!

Election day!

So today is the big scary D-day for the political gemors that's been building up over the last year or so. With half the bigwigs in court for various levels of currution, the biggest party having a major fight and splitting up into two groups...

 

When I've voted before I've been quite upset at the level of apathy that South Africans show to the whole democratic process. The queues are always bad, but generally more becauser the things in the front aren't all too organised, not because there's too much demand to join in. Last election day I was at university doing bservations on the lizards until 12, went to vote at 12:30, went home (all of 3 blocks from the voting station) had lunch and made it to work by 3pm. While I was there I noticed that hardly anyone had the black mark on their thumbs from voting, and if I asked, most people said that they didn't care.

 

This time, due to the fact that the university is over 6 weeks late to pay me and I need to put fuel in my car and feed myself when I go on fieldwork in 2 weeks, I accepted a fantastic double-pay shift at work, which starts at 4pm. So I figured I'd go through at 7am when the station opened, vote before anyone got there and then go home and work until I had to leave to go to the work that actually pays me.

 

At 7:30 I woke to find that my brother was calling me, and my alarm had been snoozing for an hour and a half. Bleh. Turns out as we registered at the same place we might as well keep each other company and so he picked me up and we joined the queue.

 

The line of people was 3 times as long as last time! It must have been over 200m of people standing around. Some enterprising people had set up a stall selling coffee and boerewors rolls (which smelled incredible but I'd just had breakfast and weetbix doesn't go well with meat) and we stood. And stood. And stood. andstoodandstoodandstoodandstoodandstood.

 

After over an hour, when conversation was drying up, our feet and backs were aching and we just wanted to go home, the little old lady behind us started trying to caht, while waving a climp of khakibos in our faces. It smelled horrible, and she apologised, explaining that every time she got sleepy she would sniff it and it woke her right back up. They should try that with long distance truck drivers, but I think they'd go on strike again.

 

Eventually after about two hours or so we got to within sight of the door, and a little bit sheltered from the freezing wind, a guy came and scanned our ID books to print out our voter registration number. I'm three thousand and something. The old lady started yelling at the poor guy with the scanner because the place was "obviously badly organised and what the hell is wrong with you people?" He sighed and carried on, it must have been his millionth lecture for the day and he's just doing his job.

 

The worst is the people cutting into the line. Old people (who are not just old but old and infirm, as the lady behind us explained) are allowed to the front along with whoever is helping them with the walker or the stick or the wheelchair or whatever. Apparently the lady behind us had been refused entry because although she was old enough, she seemed ok. She should have brandished the khakibos and gone with the insane argument - "you don't want me in the line, people won't make it out alive!"

 

Eventually we went through, had our thumbs drawn on - I wanted to request a smily-face, but when they refused to mark my right hand instead of my left I decided it wasn't worth it, scribbled my X where Iw anted it, stuffed it in the box and went home.

 

It took forever, my feet hurt and I think it'll take a few weeks to thaw from the freezing cold, but I'm glad that it was full of people. I'm really happy to see some South Africans caring about what happens to their country, and compared to before, it seems like a lot of people are voting when previously they'd stay at home and enjoy the day off. And after all, we got there at 8, and I'm home having tea and a cupcake by 12, it could have been a lot worse!

 

Here's hoping that it all turns out well in the end!

 

Happy election day!

I feel I must mention...

I feel that I must explain, I have nothing against happy couples. I
think that it's great and I'm really happy to see my friends fine
someone who can make them happy and glowy and all that.

I DO however have a major problem with couples who cannot be in the
same room without being plastered together.

I don't have an issue with people having private conversations around
me, even if we're sitting in a group of three. I have no problem
sitting quietly and doing my own thing while they argue over who is
cuter, or better, or more fantastic, or just 'hello' 'hello' 'hello'
like a pair of demented budgies . It's awkward but I can deal.

What gets me is the persistant fondling. I think it's my inherent
English upbringing, but I get very uncomfortable around public
displays of affection. I just don't know where to look. Anything
beyond holding hands gets me a little uncomfortable, particularly when
it's just me and 'ze ghappy couple!' and I have no option of getting
away.

It sucks as I used to spend almost every tuesday might sitting having
dinner with Jo, and then this guy started dropping by. She was still
married at the time and officially trying to save the marriage, so it
wasn't bad because they never even touched each other when I was
around. Then she needed a confidant, I happened to be around and next
thing you know they were all coupley around me, no holds barred,
complete with reflex-rebound from all the hiding it.

And so now that I'm working I've been stuck in a store with them for
the last 4 hours. They've been stroking each other for most of the
time, whenever they're not doing the grope-while-walking-past move, or
the staring lovingly into each other's eyes while giggling at the
amazing wit that they seem to have. Like ' it looks like a little D,
so instead of 'no disc' it looks like it says 'nod isc' isn't that
funny?'

The thing is, they LIVE together, why do I have to watch them, when
they have hours and hours at home every evening?

I just don't get it.

It gets worse

And now they're calling each other pet names and feeding each other
Thai food. I feel kind of ill...

randomness

I'm liking this blogging from email thing! I'm at work and I've jacked a connection from the Italian Restaurant next door and I'm sitting typing away innocently while my boss and her new flossie cavort around the store. Peaunut butter curry has arrived!!! W00t!

The cutest thing EVER!

So I started watching this movie last night and it's the cutest thing EVER! I haven't finished it yet because my ribs are a bit bruised from falling and laughing really hurts, so I'm waiting until I feel better to finish it. I might finish it sooner though because apparently I look like hell today and a few people have hugged me and told me to go home and stuff and it makes me feel crap to think that I'm not hiding the headache as well as I'd thought.

So anyway, if you're looking for an adorable but very funny movie, I would totally recommend it! It makes me want to run off and film stuff!

whiplash!

So I was playing with my dog on Saturday and she doubled back for some reason and tripped me up. I was running pretty much full-tilt at the time which meant that when I went flying, I REALLY went flying! The dog somehow got out of the way and I did a graceful swan-dive, culminating in a face-first 1 metre slide along paving stones.

 

I snapped my head back (and avoided concussion) and escaped with losing the skin on my knees and elbows, the front of my thighs has bruised black, friction from my shirt ripped some of the skin off my chest and I bruised my ribs so ghat I am entirely unable to laugh 9and of course many hilarious things happened ever since).

 

Of course my dogs see my lying on the ground and go "Hey! That looks like fun!" and they both jumped o top of me, tails wagging away. I realised I had whiplash when I got a pounding headache an hour or so alter and lost the ability to turn my head. I took some painkillers and headed off to the zoo benefit at the theatre, where by interval the room was spinning alarmingly and so I snuck off early and went home to collapse.

 

So now I look like I'm being abused at home, I'm wearing long sleeves and scarves to hide the bruising and I still have a nasty headache. Al because I thought that my puppies would like to play!

Church people

So I went off to church on Easter Sunday as the good little priest's kid that I am. Admittedly I was exhausted, having sat up until late the night/morning before playing board games and watching DVDs before collapsing on a couch so I probably wasn't in the best mood.

Anyway i got there and the place was PACKED! We usually have 100 - 150 people in there and being Anglicans that avoid sitting anywhere near the front we manage to fit inside quite comfortably without having to make eye contact with any strangers.

So I found a spot at last and settled in, feeling a bit queasy from lack of air, but otherwise OK, and then I looked up to see that a really old couple with walking sticks had arrived and there was nowhere for them to sit. Everyone who noticed them either stared straight ahead, or focused on the pew leaflet or something, in the understanding that until you make eye contact it is not your problem and someone else would help them. I got up and gave them my place, much to the chagrin of the person next to me who had to (shock! horror!) move up a little bit and after much hunting I found another seat.

Ten minutes later the same thing happened and everyone ignored the new old people AGAIN! After about 15 minutes into the service I was feeling really sick from the church being super-stuffy and i found that I was far more comfortable sitting on the floor in the corner behind the bell tower and so I spent half the service there before the sides-man decided that it looked bad and was actually very kind and brought me a stool to sit on.

It really bothers me that people go to church and get all dressed up and the whole shebang, and they sit with their prayer books and hymnals and sing loudly about how awesome God is and how we must love everyone, and then they treat the people in their midst like that. It would have taken five seconds for a row of people to shift closer together and make a space for a newcomer, but heaven forbid we sit next to a stranger!

More monkeys and sunshine than I can handle in one weekend

So I decided to spend a few hours at the zoo on Friday and ended up spending most of my day there. It started when I went in to feed the monkeys and my friend the zookeeper gave me a bag and a broom and told me to change their straw. it was disgusting, and particularly difficult to do with monkeys hanging of me and launching themselves onto my back. It was particularly tricky when Thandi realised that she got quite the reaction from me if she started poking at my butt every time I bent over.


It was quite special because Oliver, the spider monkey has been very standoffish lately, to the point where he'll play with one or two people but he's pretty much avoiding contact. Anyway by the end of it I had Thandi jumping up and down on my shoulders and launching into my arms or onto the nice springy bag of straw, Oliver holding on to me and ignoring her, and the floor was all shiny and clean!

From there I helped with random things around the zoo, notably moving a few lizards to different tanks, which involved carrying extremely heavy tanks filled with sand between displays, catching lizards inside the tanks and then setting up new tanks with two lizards in each hand. It was awesome!

The next day I organised to go in early and help, in exchange for letting my uncle visit a few animals. He's blind, and so it's really fantastic for him to be able to touch different animals and learn about them, while 'seeing' their different characteristics. It's also a great excuse or me to be able to go and play with some of the animals I don't get to see very often. The best part (besides watching my aunt's face when the Mona monkey peed on her shoe) was going into one of the lemur enclosures and paying with a hand-reared lemur. He's adorable and fluffy and so so cute and we had the added bonus of the general public on the other side of the bars looking very jealous!

The bad part was that as I was helping with the new baby spider monkey and the Mona monkey, I ended up changing nappies and the little spider decided to pee all over my lap when I changed her. I hosed myself down and used some hand soap so it was all off, but I had a rather embarrassingly situated wet patch. I forgot about it until we came out of the lemur enclosure and were confronted with half my third-year students coming to say Hi!

and after all that I was completely exhausted, went to a games evening were Luke was house-sitting and was so tired I managed to end up on the wrong third avenue! Whoever decided to put two roads with the same name within 5 km of each other was a moron!

Life After Facebook

So I've been considering deleting my facebook account for a while now. It was fun for a bit, but right now its just annoying. For one thing it's blocked at university until 5pm, by which point I'm either busy working on something, or trying to get to work so that my day wasn't wasted. I also have absolutely no interest in half the stupid applications which I get invited to on a daily basis. I usually add them just to stop the notifications. And with the grand unveiling of the "new Facebook" I found myself losing interest completely.

So anyway my birthday in in a couple of days and usually I would set up an event on facebook and we'd go from there. This often lead to me invite people I never would have thought to invite if I hadn't seen their names on the list, and that usually led to very entertaining evenings with people I don't see often enough!

But this year I couldn't bring myself to log on, so instead I sent an email out to a bunch of people and sent sms messages to some others and the response has been underwhelming... I guess I left it a bit late, but it seems like people check facebook more often than their email!

Just quickly

So Bullet for my Valentine and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus pulled out of Cokefest. I'm a bit annoyed, particularly because apparently Red Jumpsuit Apparatus pulled out because they've got 'recording commitments' or something. I'm pretty sure recording studios need to be booked and so you'd know long before the people in South Africa had advertised (they released the lineup ridiculously late). Plane tickets and accommodation and everything are booked. Two years ago Guns and Roses did the same thing. Apparently Bullet for my Valentine were scared to perform without a manager holding their little bitty hands.

It really bothers me, not so much because I'm a major fan - to tell the truth I was planing on going to keep a friend company, but I was hoping that it would make the crowd a bit older - the joy of Snow Patrol being one of the main features is that the place will be packed with 15-year olds.

In the meantime as it's a public holiday tomorrow we've decided to have Donut Thursday instead of Donut Friday and then I have to run off and lecture the first-years and then tutor third-years.

It looks like so much fun!

I was watching a music video that has a huge fight scene between two people (totally over-acting and so not as horrible as it could be) and I just though that it could be really hard to act it out. I mean how on earth do you keep a straight face while pretending to throttle someone?

The blinding blinding pain!

So I went off to the gym last night, to find that the bodybuilder and the creepy little guy - while still regular fixtures over the last few months - weren't there. instead I ran into a bunch of my students. It was very awkward. so I ran off to the bike that I always use and settled down to do some serious cycling, and I nearl did 30 km! i was so proud! And now I can't climb stairs without considerable pain. I've had worse though, so I guess all in all it's not that bad!

I've also decided to stop the banging-head-against wall reaction (no, not literally) that i've had towards several people lately. I guess it's harder to move on for some relationships than others, particularly when the people in question have been around for a long time. A long time ago when a friend of mine 'unfriended' me by sms I was terribly upset until I realised that while I was a bad friend to her, I also hated being around her because she made me feel incredibly guilty all the time. There are people in my life at the moment who berate and criticise and basically make me feel like I'm substandard, and its just not good.

So while I listened to some loud music (just because I listen to goth music when I exercise does NOT make me a goth!) and ignored the cramping in my legs, I decided that it has to be more than me deciding that it doesn't bother me. I have to make a more active decisiona nd stop getting myself into situations that make me feel like I'm not worthwhile.

Some people go to the gym to spend time with friends, others for the endorphin rush, or to remove the guit of eating that extra donut. I go there to figure out my life. Therapy? Give me a bike and an imaginary road stretching off into infinity!

So just when I thought I was making progress...

So after all the girly discussions we've been having in the lab, me painting my toenails a scary lumo-pink (which I love, but that's besides the point) and even choosing clothes that had been ironed a few times a week (rather than the usual rolling out of bed and checking to see wat's the least crumpled) it appears that the world still sees me as being male.

During lunch today I got my bag out to get money to give to someone so that they could bring me caffeine (why you can't buy a caffeine IV is still beyond me) I found my insanely bright orange nail poilish that I thought I'd lost. So I got all excited and painted my nails. A few minutes into it Luke walked past, did a double take, blinked a few times and said "Am I seeing things?"

aaaaargh!

All growed up

So Luke lectured for the first time today, it was very different for me to be on the observing side rather than last time when I had to jump in with both feet and teaach room full of second-years. He had a tough time, the class was packed - well over a hundred students, the acoustics in the room are awful so he had to really work at projecting, and the girls sitting behind me are already planning their stalking campaign.

Despite all of that he did a totally amazing job! I was so stunned to see him transforming from the quirky and enthusiastic student to an authority figure. The kids listened, the called him "Sir" and they wrote furiously. I think if you were to tell them that he was only a few years older than most of them they wouldn't believe you.

It was really amazing to watch!

So we're all growing up, and it's very very scary!

And I refuse to accept that I'm nearly 24 until it happens thank you very much!

Fridays are never predictable

So every Friday morning we have coffee and donuts together. This morning was no exception and we were joined by the IT guy, who is actually quite cool. He also cleaned out my laptop with a high-pressure air thingie and washed my screen (with soap!) and we had a chat which was quite enlightening and thought provoking.

I was also slapped on the butt by a cleaning lady/man (I'm not sure), had some awesome moments of people watching, was tickled and chased by said tickler into the men's room, listened to some strangely uplifting morbid music and had a good giggle about some people's reactions to the lyrics.

Luke has discovered failblog, so we lost a good while to giggling over the silly things that people do/say/wear/film. the nun who works next door dragged me aside under the pretenses of my being in trouble, when she just wanted gift-giving advice. The vet from the zoo hugged me, which freaked me out totally, and the new vet student is being pursued by almost all the girls who work at the zoo which is very entertaining to watch.

We also discussed chemical peels, cellulite massages, that mineral blasting thing, the pros and cons of sunblock... poor Luke! Although he starts it as often as not...

I had way too much coffee today, and nothing makes much sense, so I'm going to stop now.

Super-substitute! (Not really super but super enough)

So I woke up this morning feeling fantastic (possibly helped by a rather large mug of coffee). I just knew that it would be a great day. I got up, got ready and left to go to the lab, and proceeded to get stuck behind every slow moving car in the southern hemisphere. no problem, I'd found another old cassette tape that for some reason has the soundtrack to My Fair Lady, so I was quite happily driving along, enjoying the sunshine and singing along (windows closed of course, nothing like a funny look from a biker to throw off a perfectly good morning!).

Anyway I was a few blocks away when my phone rang, and on the ther end was one of the higher-ups at the zoo, in tears because the zoo staff decided to go on strike today and there was nobody to feed the animals. I went through immediately and was left alone pretty much taking care of all the lizards.

Despite a slightly close encounter with a cranky sungazer it all went well and I was moving from one area to another when I heard the strikers approaching, vuvuzelas blaring (WHY they must scare the animals is beyond me, why not just march around management's cars in the parking lot?) And I (very heroically of course) turned and ran back inside.

fortunately one of the institutions that works out of the zoo was running a tour and I'm quite well acquainted with the tourguide and so I gave them an impromptu lecture on the various lizards and lizards in general, and was able to keep them occupied until the danger ahd passed and I could go and climb the fences into the tortoise enclosures to feed them.

For the record, the tortoises were starving and rushed to the food, and it was the cutest thing ever! After that I joined the others and got covered in baboon poo while a friend of mine was nearly attacked by said baboonand I learned the skill of cleaning a water dish through the bars of a cage by skillfully manoevring a hose pipe (although that last orange peel will be in there for all eternity).

Once we'd finished there we went to start on the next section to find that the strike was over and the real zoo staff were back at work. So we went for lunch. And then I saw Thandi, the baby mandril and played witha meerkat and did all the usual stuff I do at the zoo, before going shopping! Where I discovered that, while MAC has some awesome stuff, the staff have no idea how to use it and I ended up feeling like I'd spent half an hour in a room full of... ladies of the night?

So I didn't actually make it to uiversity today, but I had a totally awesome day. And I'm so glad I wore sunblock! Although closed shoes would have been advisable!

I should research this!

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

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

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

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

Girls who like boys who like...

I am going to stop talking about life in the lab or a bit, mainly because the girl who tried very hard to wreck the equipment is now being more annoying than ever and I really have no desire to rehash the lecture I just gave her via email.

anyway last night we were chatting to the IT guy about GHD straighteners, and he freaked out at the level of girliness and ran off, and so I was chatting to my labmate, and it became apparent that she had never even seen a hair straightener, does not own a hairdryer and only uses conditioner when the mood hits.

And as much as I tend to climb trees, get covered in dirt and get bitten or crapped on by various animals regularly, I freaked! Life without heat-styling? A day without conditioner? Even if you listen to Oprah and only use shampoo twice a week, you HAVE to condition!

Anyway the IT guy is going overseas and might be able to pick up a GHD for me. I have the good old Toni & Guy which I'm totally fond of, but I'm torn between saving up for a new camera lens, or grabbing the opportunity for the world's most awesome straightener...

Thoughts?

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!

A rather mundane description of a rather fun weekend

So on Friday, after a lab that went on FOREVER I went straight off to Northgate for movie/girls' night with Storm and Lara and the whole crew. We went and saw Confessions of a Shopaholic, and I once again and the experience of seeing a movie that I would usually hate, and absolutely loving it purely because of the people I was with. Whenever something funny happened Lara and I would laugh and then as we finished giggling I would hear Kerry, on my other side cracking up and I'd start laughing all over again.

And then when the movie finished Storm and her cousin randomly decided to head off clubbing without us (when she had been the organiser of the whole thing), so the rest of us went off for drinks and ended up chatting and generally catching up. then when I remembered I'd left my phone on silent and that I was over an hour later that I'd told my folks and they were throwing a fit. So I scuttled off home and passed out until about 20 minutes before I was due at work at the vet on Saturday.

Oh, and for some reason that movie made me REALLY want to go shopping. It was very strange!

I somehow made it to work in time, to find out that it was a public holiday, the vet was closed and there were a lot of angry people with sick dogs in the parking lot One of them was the cutest puppy EVER! But as it happened I didn't have the vet's cellphone number on me, nobody was answering their phones, and I got tired of being yelled at so I left and went two blocks down the road to visit Lara at work, where we sympathised at each other for mutual tiredness and I got some movies and headed home to do my marking in front of the tv.

Then i lay down for 5 minutes, and woke up several hours later when summoned for lunch, which I literally ate with my eyes closed (a tricky skill when it comes to soup) and headed back to bed, getting up in time to go to gym and buy fudge ingredients. Apparently I wasn't as awake as I though as I bought the wrong ingredients, but I had an awesome gym session and left feeling all invigorated and stuff and so I went home and made brownies instead of fudge (the joy of having a recipe that used ingredients that really are usually lying around the house) and went off to Chief Goth's house.

Where it turned out that storm was "too tired" to join us! Lara was livid and basically the evening consisted of us trying some new wine that CG had bought and listening to the two of them bitching about Storm. While I see their point, I felt kind of awkward when they said things like "I see more of Helen than I do of Storm!" well... I would hope so! Eventually La picked up on it and pointed out that that is pretty amazing considering I don't live I the same city as them half the time, and so we played guitar hero.

Sunday was horrible, I was a zombie all day again, to the point where I think I worried Luke a bit when I spoke to him and all I could say was that life sucked and my feet were cold. At this stage it was well into the afternoon and I had gone back to bed. Eventually I got up, freaked at the time as I was late for church and went dashing out the house to meet my mom in the driveway where I realized that it was actually an hour earlier than I thought it was, and so I carried on marking, went to church and then went off to gm where I nearly collapsed.

Weird.

Ink-blot tests

So marking undergrrad drawings is somewhat like doing inkblot tests. I had to mark drawings of worms which looked like breakfast, maps, basketball courts, not to mention the longitudinal sections which get unbelievably phallic... Luke in the bakground, gigglng at Engrish.com doesn't really help.

At the same time I'm marking the second years who had to answer questions about birds. Here are some of this year's gems:

Eagles eat kids

Flamingos squeeze food in their tongue
The also eat by using their erectile tissue

Flamingos are pink so that they're camouflages amongst the flamingos (circular much?)

Birds eat anything they can get their claws on (I'm quoting here)

A flightless bird other than an ostrich is a volstruis (i.e. there are ostriches and afrikaans ostriches)

Parrots have great muscle

The kneecap is known as the photata

Ostriches are totally flghtless because they have bone marrow

And of course the classic: Owls eat lawns at night. Sometimes even hedges.

And they say that teaching is boring?

Donut-day

So in celebration of our having had a coffee machine for over two weeks we went and got donuts and pretended to e cops eating donuts and drinking coffee. I managed to convince Luke (a non-coffee drinker) to pour coffee ito his white hot chocolate - the result being that now I have to drink the stuff. Whoops. It's actually quite nice!

Now that I've spent the most part of the last 5 weeks teacing and/or marking, I find myself a little bit sad that the second year course is over. I still have my first year kiddies until I go off on fieldwork and pawn them off on someone else, but I think there's something infinitely more fun about teaching something I actually know, and haivng a huge group so if someone annoys you oyu can arrange to be on the other side of the room at all times (that's a carefully cultivated skill).

I sat in the lab and marked until late last night - my fist years are mostly passing, but for some reason can't wrap their OBEd little heads around scale and magnification. apparently there is a liver parasite out there roughly the size of Gauteng - the poor darling multiplied instead of divididng and then converted backwards - ending up with metres instead of micrometres. While I understand that it's tricky, surely they should notice that the segment the looked at was not 17 m long?

I must go off to a prelab now, where we will be taught nothing of use andthen I'll be spending lunch cramming so that I can be of some use to the children later.

And then I have girls' night tonight, I'm so excited! I haven't seen osme of my friends in months and I can't wait to go and see a good old chick flick and have dinner and man-bashing (not that I have anything against most guys, but they need someone to provide sympathy...)

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 something new is something old, but also entirely new...

So on Sunday night the nerves set in a little bit. I was ok, handling everything as I do, when my family forced me to do another trial run in front of them. So I got the notes and the pictures and proceeded to go through it all again. And they sat and blinked at me. It was awful! Like talking to a brick wall or something. I know back in the day when they were studying it was much more formal and interacting in class was totally frowned upon, but really! Even when I asked direct questions they just stared blankly.

Then I figured out at about 4am that I had a stomach bug (I will spare the details) and basically ended up staggering in on Monday morning having had about two hours of sleep and feeling like I was about to pass out.

Everyone at the lab (including the lecturer who I was teaching for) thought that I was about to collapse from an awful state of nerves. In a fit of solidarity they decided to wait until I was finished to make coffee (coffee makes me talk faster) and Luke and Megan and I headed upstairs to set up.

I was very lucky in that the first half involved them watching a video and answering questions which gave me time to calm down a bit, and then I gave them a break and got started.

And it wasn't too bad! It was the weirdest feeling, to be talking to a room full of people who are quiet and taking notes, but at the same time it wasn't weird at all. After the first few minutes I forgot that I was supposed to be nervous and I was more frustrated when they weren't participating enough. For the record, the obnoxious show-offs in the front row? Lifesavers! And towards the end they got more involved and I got through everything and I even let them go early.

So in a fit of bravery, I decided to give the next lecture, yesterday. With only one day to plan and not really understanding how to teach the stuff without it being boring and Luke being off getting a gangrenous limb checked out by the doctor, it was a little bit more nerve-wracking, but they were way more involved and it was a lot of fun, except that the loudmouths starting getting a bit difficult, but until the last five or so minutes they were fantastic and I enjoyed it. And to their credit, the last five minutes was just before lunch and I don't blame them for being a bit fidgety.

So that was my amazing lecturing debut! It was actually not bad at all and I'd like to do more someday (although not right now, my research is suffering under my teaching load already), but at the same time it wasn't very different to the teaching I've been doing in the labs for the last 5 years! It helped that I knew the students from labs and that there were only about 70 of them, rather than the huge first-year classes of a few hundred. And I had the awesome moral support of Megs and Luke, and the support form the lecturer who trusted me enough to let me teach his classes without forcing me to let him sit there which would have been WAY too much pressure!

And there was the little issue when the chalkboard got stuck and I have to do some fancy stances to try to move it...

So that's it, I'm alive, it's over and I don't feel like I've really done anything new! Except that in a fit of insomnia last night/this morning I downloaded a chess game on my phone and I can't beat it! It's driving me crazy!

Rejected...

So I was youtubing the Flight of the Conchords and I saw the song ‘Rejected’ and laughed like I haven’t in years. As it’s stuck in my head at the moment I figured I’d use it as a title.

Random stuff aside, the reason I’ve been so quiet lately is that, besides the usual insane load of labs I have to teach in at the beginning of each year, I decided that I need the experience and agreed to do some lecturing for one of the courses. The scary part is that it’s tomorrow and it’s on a topic that I’m not particularly clued-up on!

On the plus side I got the materials over a month ago and I’ve had plenty of time to prepare, and I have actually been preparing, albeit slowly. It’s just scary because I’ve never done it before! I’m not afraid of the kids- I’ve failed enough of them over the last few weeks that I don’t really have to worry about my authority being in question, and the field trip is only next weekend so they haven’t yet seen me half asleep, cranky and clutching at my coffee-cup as if it’s the only thing keeping me alive (I love camping, really, but teaching and camping at the same time is exhausting, particularly when it includes trying desperately to avoid seeing the lecturer in charge in his underwear… true story!)

The lecturer who traditionally runs this section has also been amazingly supportive, he’s talked me through lecturing styles, points to focus on, ways to avoid being boring (lets hope!) pacing… and we went to one of his lectures last week to get an idea of how to approach talking to 70-odd rather stupid children. So I was feeling fine!

To tell the truth by Friday the people around me were displaying several signs of nerves and freaking out on my behalf, and I was feeling calm and confident and generally ok. Then last night I went over the plans one more time and then did a trial lecture to Lara.

For the record, Lara is the most awesome friend in the world*! She is now a lawyer who is totally clued up on rodent diversity, and she listened and participated and asked questions (including sticking her hand up and going “Ooh! Ooh!” in a way that was creepily reminiscent of my students) and she pointed out things that I would have forgotten.

1.This is something I know, but most of my friends are used to me and don’t notice anymore: I speak fast. Really, I watch movies at double speed because I understand what they’re saying because I tend to talk that fast. I also write super-quickly. When I’m nervous I speed up even more. I’ve been known to give a 15 minute presentation in under 8 minutes without leaving anything out. As La said “You’re an awesome teacher, just try… keep it below the speed of light?” So I’m stressing that they won’t be able to keep up with me because they are undergrads, and if I’m anything to go by, they’ll want to write down every word.

2. I go off on tangents. I have the attention span of a two-year old, which can make me super effective as a sequential-multi-tasker but awful to follow in a conversation. I generally have at least three or four conversations running at a time and I switch between them – once again I don’t notice and a lot of my friends don’t either, but Lara, in her pretending to take notes eventually gave me a blank stare and said “You just harped on about flower structure for five minutes, I’m assuming that’ll be in the exam?”

Anyway I’m stressing out now! I asked my mom if she’d do a run-through with me, but she’s swinging between being way too keen and not caring, so I think I’m actually going to gym to work out the stress a bit and then I’ll come back and go over my notes one more time. Wish me luck!

And if the worst comes to the worst, I have Lara on standby for drinks and sympathy on Monday night!

*This isn’t necessarily true as I have a really awesome bunch of friends, but in this case I think she deserves a special mention as most lawyers would not agree to spend a Saturday night being told about rodents by someone who can’t even stay on topic!

By popular demand

Here is a picture of the monkey I was playing with on Sunday. It's just from my phone, so nothing too exciting, but as anyone who has had much t do with monkeys will tell you: taking anything that might be fragile, delicate, expensive and/or breakable in any way is a bad idea.

For the record they love removing their nappies (diapers) and so we put them on backwards so they can't find the tabs. And when they get older and figure it out we give them little tape-belts - works like a charm!

It's wearing a nappy!

So on Saturday I got a message from a friend of mine who works at the zoo, asking if I was still alive. I usually spend at least two Sundays at the zoo every month (if not ever Sunday) as well as popping by occasionally during the week when I've had a particularly bad day. As it happens I had been thinking about her that morning (weird huh?) and so I replied straight away to say that I wold be there on Sunday.

And it was awesome! I hadn't realised how much I'd missed the zoo - from the crazy people I know there to the weird puddle that you should NEVER step in, to the fact that ever visit involves me doing completely different things! The monkeys gave me a huge welcome as usual, although at one stage Thandi freaked out about something and got very aggressive to me, and then proceeded to evacuate her bowels all over the zookeeper. Oops.

Fortunately nobody works at the zoo without keeping several changes of clothes handy and so after appropriating a clean t-shirt from a vet and meeting a very charming new vet student (who had the girls squabbling over him almost immediately) and having lunch with a bunch of people (including some who thought I'd been away on fieldwork because it's been so long...) and feeding the crocodiles (for the record, giant piles of meat drip! and f your friend happens to be bending over to grab some as you lift it up... blood in hair is so not cool!

So anyway after all that I was taken to meet one of the new monkeys. This one has been raised as a brother to the little spider-monkey who was born last year, although he's a Mona Monkey (and he is also convinced that a teddy bear is him mother) and he's very mobile and super-cute!

The main problem is that he is so active already - with the monkeys before they were always quite nervous and would hang on to me while I walked around and did whatever - wit the last two I wold literally put them under my jacket and zip it up and they'd hold on and go to sleep while we did whatever needed doing around the zoo. This little guy is totally fearless and won't stay with anybody for more than a few seconds. At the beginning he was asleep in his basket with his teddy, but that barely lasted five minutes and then he was very much awake!

So the rest of the day involved me catching up with people as we drove from place to place, rescuing one of the education ladies from a cranky boa (not the feather kind) and keeping the monkey occupied. A lot of that included being left in the zoo vehicle trying to stop him from eating everything that wasn't tied down - they have pouches, so if anything gets into his mouth you have to get your fingers in and pull it out - did I mention he bites?

By the end of the day he and I were getting along pretty well, he didn't squeak too much whenever I picked him up (usually to stop him from shoving something else in his mouth) and I figured out that swinging him around in his basket made him settle down and stay still(ish) and I had a lot of fun attacking hi with his teddy bear and playing with him.

The only problem is that the general public tend to notice him and swarm around you, and the first thing you hear is "Oh CUTE! Kyk hierdie apie! ag mommie! He's wearing a nappy!!" EVERY time! Sometimes they manage to get me to respond (I avoid making eye contact at all costs) and generally I get asked about how long he has to wear a nappy. i usually respond honestly - "Once he's in a cage and I don't have to worry about being crapped on."

Seriously, how about mentioning his amazingly long tail, or how tiny and perfect his fingernails are, or how his noises sound like a squeaky dog-toy... nope, how amazing he's wearing a nappy.

Next time I see a human baby I know I'll be tempted to say "how cute! He's wearing a nappy!" and see exactly how excited the mother gets...