ok, so it's been a while...

It's been over 2 months, I'm sorry! Although to be quite honest, since the huge Facebook craze hit SA, nobody's really blogging anymore...



Things have been hectic here, I've changed nature reserve about 4 times, study species twice (so I'm currently on number 3), proect a few times, but lately that's pretty settled although I have asolutely no clue what I'm doing! At least I tend to swing wildly between knowing exactly what I'm doing and getting all excited, even though I know there are areas that still need a lot of work and a lot of learning, and then there are tmes when I just want to jump on the next plane and get away from this crazy idea that I can do a PhD.

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!

another week ... GONE!

Time is slipping away scarily fast right now. I can hardly believe it's June already! Next month is the third year fieldttrip, thes tart of my actual project and my first conference. I shouldn't get so freaked out about the conference, it should be relatively small and I was supposed to present last year but decided to go to the desert instead!

So last week I decided that it was time to get my butt in gear and get to work properly. I submitted my abstract, my animal ethics and got my proposal in some kind of shape so I can actuallty work with it instead of pulling my hair out and crying whenever I thought about it!

Then early on Saturday morning Luke and I left to deliver a car and some equipment to Ben, a friend who is working on owls in the kalahari. It was a totally unforgettable weekend! First we got lost. I was looking for a turnoff that I'd been warned was rather small and hard to see. We went past a sign that I thought said we were 30km frmo the end of the road. Turns out we were actually 50km. So we turned around and drove back, realised that we were ketting a little bit too close to the town we'd just passed through and turned around again. As it happened, we had been 4km from the turnoff when we'd turned around the first time! The worst part was that there was a donkey-cart with people in it that we had to pass 3 times!

Molopo, the reserve Ben is working in is really amazingly beautiful! I've been to the kalahari before, but it had been a bit of a disappointment, but this was incredible! There was nothing except for a few trees and soft soft sand. Occasionally a tuft or two of grass, but it was real desert! Tswalu, where we went before had had a lot of rain that year and was really densely vegetated and I'd been really sad that I'd missed the sandy desert I've always wanted to see!

We'd been warned that it would be really cold at night and had packed accordingly (Luke even made me get a hot water bottle...) but it was actually perfect weather. We had so much fun, the conversation never died down, we laughed almost non-stop and we both got to hold the cutest little owls! They were so well behaved and never mauled us (unlike my pet birds...). We had gemsbok fighting around our camp, tree rats (we never saw them, but heard many stories, and saw a dead one) and ground squirrels stealing socks and there was sand everywhere. It was AWESOME!

I also ate enough meat to last me until about August, but it was all really nice. Luke also blew up some gemsquash, so one evening we had these little yellow strands of vegetable matter flying everywhere!

It was really hard to go home on Monday, and Wits has been really horrible and cold and entirely non-desertish, which is never fun. taht's the problem with Joburg. I love it and it'll always be home, but every time I go away it's harder to come back! I'm also starting to get excited about my fieldwork. Just because it'll be nice to get away for a while and do something other than sit behind a computer trying to think scientific thoughts!

I got tagged :)

I tag Sarah, Jeff, Angela, Meva and... Kymmy!

Here goes:
First Add a direct link to you below the name of the person who tagged you!
Include the city (or state) and the country you live in (a great way to score links and find new reads).

Nicole (Sydney, Australia)
Velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia)
Olivia (London, England)ML (Utah, USA)
Lotus (Toronto, Canada)
Tanabata (Saitama, Japan)
Andi (Dallas [Ish], Texas, United States)
Lulu (Chicago, Illinois, United States)
Chris (Boyne City, Michigan, United States)
AB (Cave Creek, Arizona, United States)
Johnny Yen (Chicago, Illinois, USA)
Bubs (Mt Prospect, Illinois, USA)
Jintrinsique (Manitowoc, Wisconsin, USA)
Dino Aka Katy (Newport News, Virginia, USA)
Angel (Gauteng, South Africa)
Tom Cat (Joburg, South Africa)
Mangaliso (Joburg, South Africa)
Helen (Joburg, Gauteng, South Africa)

Second: List your 5 top eateries where you live!

1. Thai Cafe in Paulshof. There's also a branch in Dainfern, but I haven't been there. It's next door to where I've been working for the last 3 or so years and they make
INCREDIBLE peanut butter curry! It's also run by a Thai woman who brings all her staff out from Thailand and all the decorations and everything is authentic and really beautiful. Some evenings they do traditional dancing as well, usually if there's a big function.

2. Angelo's in Bryanston. I'm not usually a fan of sitting outside on benches while I eat so I can look 'cool' like all the rich people who think it's fun, so I'd advise getting takeout and going somewhere nice that has couches... but they make really really nice lamb, chili and roasted vegetable pizza. It's not on the menu anymore, you have to ask for it, but it's awesome!

3. Radha's in Melville. It's a tiny little place that only sells vegan indian food. It's really cheap (R30 for a HUGE tub of all these weird and really nice dishes) and it's run by a really friendly guy who's name isn't Abdul. We just call him that.

4. Primi at Melrose Arch. I know some people don't like it, and it does get really noisy from the whole 'ware-house' design, but if you ask you can go upstairs and there's all these couches and it's really nice. Their food is expensive but really good and usually enough to split with someone. Last time I had some of Laura's gnocchi and it was really good! They also have teapots, which is always fun!

5. Mythos in design quarter. It's really not too great because it's squished in between a primi and somewhere else nice that I've forgotten. The only reason I'm posting about them is that as a starter you can order pita bread with humus dip. And it's really really good!

Third tag 5 other people (preferably from other countries/states) and let them know they’ve been tagged.(see above)

Back on track

Maybe blogging really does help, because since I posted I've been able to work properly like I used to! It's been really frustrating to try and work and get confused and battle to put things together. Then about 2 days ago I had a minor epiphane while in the shower - I realised why I've been battling so much! To put it simly - my project has two major components (broken down into about 6 sub-components, each of which is a huge project in itself). BAsically one of the big components doens't really fit in, but I really want to do it. So I'd been rather vague in determining my aims so that I could work it in.

The thing is, if you want to plan a really good project you need very definite aims, and then you link every single little thing back to them (so pretty much if you sneeze you have to do it in a way that will help you in accomplishing your aims). So I was battling because I didn't have an actual solid frame of reference to pin things on. I was just writing stuff and hoping it would fit together once I was done.

So yesterday I planned out a brank spanking new proposal and started over. And I think I did more good writing yesterday than I have in the last 4 or 5 months. And as nerdy and sad as this sounds, for the first time in ages I enjoyed sitting in the lab until 9pm last night because I was actually making progress and I found myself remembering why I love being a student (besides the opportunities for travel, the awesome people and the flexible workign hours).

That's all for today. I have a lot of work to do!

2 months down the line...

I really missed blogging! I got a lot more stuff donethough, I didn't realise how much time I spent blogging and reading other people's blogs (I missed all of them too!). But I just realised it's almost 2 months since my last post and I think you all deserve an update.

My proposal is currently in the form of a very well though out and organised 2-page long list, that I've tried to translate into fuull sentences and ended up with 40 pages of stuff that doesn't really make sense. I took it to workj today to work on and then left it there. So I'll be trekking out up north tomorrow to go and retieve it. not that it's really necessary (besides saving the trees by not printing another copy), but I was working in an old book that has some notes in it from a subject I really loved when I was in second year. So I want to hang on to them. I went off to the Northern Cape for just under a week in April. I spent y birthday with mylizards. the place is so incredible! It's beautiful! And everyone was really nice. The people camping near me were really friendly and kept trying to feed me when they saw I wasn't doing the traditional "make-a-fire and cook half a cow" south african thing but rather having a sandwich and going to bed at 7pm.

Every night it was someone different. I had the old guy from Upington with his son from New Zealand. This guy had cycled over 8000km around south africa and then bought a motorbike and done about that around Namibia. He's leaving next month for Australia where he has planned a 3-month cycling trip from Sydney to Perth (or the other way around. I forget). The next night was a very sweet family from Cape Town ('we made too much Potjie. PLEASE help us eat it!) who sat on the steps of their camper-vans playing the harmonica and then started up sokkie-treffers and sokkied the night away next to my tent. After that was a lovely family, also from Cape-Town who I got very fond of and spoke to them a lot. They'd pretty much taken their kids to the Kgalagadi transfrontier park for a month even though it involved their daughter missing a week of school because they figured she'd get a better education on a trip like that. When I told them about my lizards they got very excited and actually saw some the next day and took a really nice photo which they gave to me. There were also the strange conversations in the bathroom about what the word in afrikaans for bath-plug was because you had to bring your own and stuff. The night before I left a very motherly tannie chased me out the bathroom because I was leaving early (I left at 4am) and should go to bed. this was on my birthday so the whole way through my phone was ringing and bleeping while I was shooed to my tent by a middle-aged lady in curlers and pyjamas with fluffy pink slippers.

What was really amazing was how friendly the Afrikaans people were. they were mostly from the Cape. Gauteng people made really tight circles with their cars (almost like oxwagons ;)) and put their tents inside and didn't speak to anyone. I almost wanted to cover my number plate on my car so I wasn't linked to them in any way! It was a really amazing trip though. As muich as I didn't want to go on my own I'm glad I did. Partly it was a chance to prove to myself that I could manage a 940km drive on my own (it was actually quite fun1), and partly to have some time to be quite completely alone. I was out with my lizards from about 7am until around 4 or 5pm, and I didn't have to worry about anyone else and if they were bored or miserable or tired. And then I went to bed at about 7 (sunset) so I caught up on tons of sleep and got home ready to really get started. I got excited about my project for the first time in months anbd it was fantastic!

I resigned from my job last week after the politics got too much and I got so stressed out with university and work and people that I actually made myself sick (not in the finger-down-the throat way, in the I'm-so-stressed-I-can't-sleep-and-get-all-nervous-and-nearly-pass-out-and-can't-keep-anything-down kind of way. Kind of like the end of honours last year). It was really sad. I felt ok about it, considering the politics of having the manager's brother hate me and her listening to him were really childish and resulted in her phoning the owner literally seconds after I went to speak to him to demand an explanation for me going to see him. but I'll really miss working with Lara who can ALWAYS make me laugh! and when I saw the pile of horrible christmas music we have to listen to every december I got a little bit emotional. And I'll really miss the free movies! But I think it's for the best and I'm really looking forward to having my weekends unstructured and empty soon.

My supervisor is being a moron. I helped him out and with something for when he was away and all he could say afterwards was how much he had to fix up everything I'd done. Loser. I think it hurt so much mainly because I was quite nervous that we hadn't done a good enough job even though everyone else said we had. Maybe that's why I wanted him to supervise me, we have roughly equivalent standards when it comes to work. But it doesn't change the fact that I've lost a lot of respect for him as a person.

I'm finished with my first year's for the year. I'm glad that the course is over, but sad to see them go. I had a really nice group this year and we got along well (I even gave them chocolate for working hard! I've never even thought about doing that before!). A lot of them said they were thinking of doing Zoology next year, so I'm sure I'll cross paths with at least a few of them in the future. It was really frustrating though because I only had 2 students who were failing (out of 16. this is very unusual, usually at least half of them are struggling if not failing) and finally, about 2 or 3 weeks before the end I sat down with one of them and we talked through was should go in a drawing, what you should and shouldn't label. How to make your work look nice and neat (like tracing a drawing if it's been redrawn and erased and redrawn on top of itself in heavy pencil), and how to write answers that are relevant. He finally started coming right! It was so incredible! He was still failing, but he'd just about doubled his marks and was borderline-passing by the time we finished! I felt a little bit validated considering everything else going on.

The third years on the other had have been a disaster. they have lied to me, moaned at me, had a screaming match over their marks withme, complained to the lecturer about me, requested that I don't mark them... and so on. Fortunately they're really not very intelligent liars so it's easy to shut them up, but considering :a) my third years hate me; b) my proposal is proving to be tricky; c)I can't do a simple job well enough for my supervisor and d)I couldn't get along with a little 17-year-old well enough to stay at my job; and e)I found a grey hair last week (I'm22! I can't be going grey!) I've been feeling a little bit miserable lately.

so I took things to extremes, skipped the social-after-work/varsity friday evening and went home and had soup. It wasn't enough, so on Saturday (yesterday) I had more soup, and dyed my hair.

Now I'm feeling better.

Tomato soup and hair-dye rocks!
(not together obviously!)

I've been thinking

Hey guys,

I've been thinking a lot over the last day or two (I would have said this sooner, but I think blogger was down, it wouldn't let me post), and I've realised that my priorities in life are severely skewed and I need to fix it. My work, which should have been my number one priority, has been falling behind, and I'm not stressed enough about it. The people who were supposed to be supportive, evidently aren't, so I need to fix things properly myself.

I've decided to take a break from blogging so I can focus properly. I also got a bit tired of people knowing what was going on inside my head, I need some privacy. So thanks everyone, it's been real. If anything noteworthy happens in the next month or two I'll make sure to post it, but until then I'll be pretty quiet.

It's been real.

Do I send out 'encourage me?' vibes?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

post #100!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

It's not monday

Yesterday was a public holiday, and now it feels like monday. It was awesome to have a break though! I was EXHAUSTED!

It all started on Monday, with an hour prelab for the Bird Prac (play ominous music), where I had to fight giggles the whole way through. Hearing the lecturer, who is very English and 'well-mannered' (for lack of a better word) say things like 'cock-up' was a bit more than an early morning brain could handle.

The prac itself was a disaster, it should have taken an hour and a half and ended up taking 4 hours. The thing is, it's ordered in stations, with questions at each station and 3 minutes to answer it. The lecturer kept complaining that there wasn't enough time, so we had 8 minute stations, 15 minute stations, half an hour stations...

Then on tuesday, on top of a whole pile of bird pracs to mark, I got my first-years' pracs in my pigeonhole. I also started coming down with flu, and ended up falling asleep over my computer wearing 3 jerseys and shivering. I ran off at lunchtime to see Carla's wedding dress (it's SO stunning! ) and then to see Jo at work and try and make peace. That done (it's all more or less normal, she's doing my nails tomorrow, I'm buying her a carton of cigarettes for her birthday and dying of guilt if she ever gets lung cancer).

After that I went home and collapsed and slept for around 15 hours. At one staeg I got an sms, hear the tone, looked up, fell asleep. Reached for my phone, fell asleep. Realised it wasn't there, fell asleep. Reached on the other side, fell asleep. It took me an hour to find my phone and read the message.

Yesterday, feeling much more human, I went off to my friend Trishya's 21st. It was nice, very relaxed, just sitting around listening to a whole bunch of geology students getting excited about rocks, and one really annoying girl going on andon about rainbows and pink teddy bears and pink hearts...

Eventually I spent about 3 of the 4 hours talking to Lynne, her sister and it was really nice. I haven't talked to her properly since my 12st, which was just under a year ago.

After that I went home and started marking. I got through all the bird pracs (I must post the amusing answers sometime, I made a list. They weren't as funny as usual this time though), and most of the first year pracs. Those were shocking. I have a nice bunch of students, and they all do pretty well, but I think they're getting lazy and put very little effort into it. It's actually an insult to me, that they don't bother with their work and expect me to put hours of my time into marking it and giving them constructive feedback. It's too bad that I'm not going to be there tomorrow, or they would have got SUCH a talking to!

Anyway I must finish my marking now and get back to work.

Energy reserves

No, I'm not going to talk about something like oil and coal and war and why I drive around instead of taking the bus. I'm going to talk about people. How is it that some people have this boundless energy? And others just run out so quickly? What makes some people able to jump up and down when it's necessary, while others just collapse?

I'm thinking about this because I finished at wits today completely exhausted. My first years were not the most cooperative today, they were bored by the material I think (tapeworms and so on) and tired from writing tests all week. Eventually I finished and settled down at Biosoc with a bunch of people to try and relax enough to be able to go home without nervous twitches (but not relaxed enough to fall asleep on the lawn and wake up covered in hazard tape).

Then my brother called. It turned out that Tree 63 - a South African band that has settled in the U.S.A but has been here touring - was playing a last concert about 2 minutes drive away from my house. Carla was so busy being stressed out about wedding plans to go, so her ticket was free. I refused because I knew she'd love to see them and should probably take a break. He called make a few minutes later to say that she was going, but there were still tickets from friends who couldn't go, and I must get home ASAP to make it in time.

So I went sprinting down the hill, where I ran into Ben, a masters student studying owls. Turn out he's going on a Happening weekend - a kind of camp type thing, hard to explain - and I ended up chatting to him for ages before I realised the time and dashed home.

The concert was really good except that 3 little teenage girls (all: 'watch me dance! I'm so pretty! let me swish my hair into other people's faces so they can see how shiny and soft it is!') kept dancing into my way so I'd shuffle to the right a bit until I ended up separated from my brother and Carla and behind a rather stocky afrikaans guy who kept yelling stuff like 'Vrystaat!' and 'Boerewors!' and who had obviously eaten something too rich or something before he came, because the smells emanating from him every five minutes or so were enough to knock out a full grown lion from a 25m radius.

A cool thing was also that I ran into someone I had in my group when I was a staff-member on Happening. I had been very fond of him, but lost his number somewhere along the line. It was so nice to see that he's doing well and still laughs a lot and jumps around. He's a long story of mine that I won't be telling here. But I will say that the fact that he is laughing like that means a lot to me. He's going to be delivering stuff to people for me tomorrow.

Anyway, seeing him, and chatting to Ben and being too tired to walk after TAing and jumping around made me think about energy. How is it that sometimes you have this hidden reserve and sometimes you don't? Like today, I wanted to collapse, but I was able to have a great time at the concert. Another time I was on a camp as staff and we were so exhausted one day we all fell over and lay on the floor together. The minute the kids arrived we were all on our feet dancing and jumping around and doing silly things. Where does the energy come from? And why can't I harness it more often?

It's all run out now. I'm going to bed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's over!

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm still alive, I promise!

I'm sorry I haven't posted for a week, it's been super hectic.

Firstly, I have plans for saturday that didn't go with work, so I had to ask for time off, to find out that ALL the staff are off on Saturday. I resorted to grovelling and got someone to work for me. Yay!

I'm still behind schedule studies-wise, but making headway. I'm starting to get a 'feel' for the literature and stuff and I'm getting to know the questions I'm asking in a broader context rather than just in my study animal, which is AWESOME!

My supervisor is ignoring all of us again. I'm pretty used to it, and glad I'm not being watched as I very slowly read about 3-5 papers every day (which is nothing), between cartloads of teaching duties. the honours students are presenting their proposals on monday and tuesday next week and are completely freaking out. It's weird to see it from this angle. It's not quite deja-vu, but almost!

I had a huge fight with my mother today. Basically, at the kitchen tea, Carla's sister made a huge show of thanking one of the bridesmaids who had done nothing other than arrive the night before to tie ribbons onto glasses and then complain that only me and her husband could tie bows. I got a 'oh, and Helen was there too!" thrown in. I felt, understandably I'd think considering the amount of time I'd spend doing stuff for it, a bit upset but decided to leave it.

Then this morning my mother asked if I was going to the dress fitting. It was the first I'd ever heard of it, and it turned out that Carla was having a fitting for her wedding dress and had invited my mother, her mother and her sister to go and see it. Apparently I was invited too, but never heard anything about it. I was a bit upset because I had specially asked to see the dress when it arrived, but figured it was a parents thing and thought nothing of it. My mother insisted I call Carla and ask but I refused , figuring that if I asked where my invite was it would be forcing her and making her feel awkward.

So my mother did the 'natural' thing - went to Carla, told her that I hate her and my entire family and therefire hers by extension and that I had not been thanked at all for the kitchen tea and yadda yadda yadda. So I got a really upset sms from Carla and then got called by my mother who said that I have to 'build bridges' and make up with her.

Thanks mom. And good job of BURNING ALL THE BRIDGES I've been working on for the last 4+ years. Something tells me that when I'm finished this degree and I go overseas I'm not coming back. And then if my mother tells everyone that I hate them (she did it with my grandmother already) I won't have to deal with it. I can't handle this anymore!

I've been trying to sms Carla for 2 hours now. I just don't know what to say. I think she'll be upset, but I can't allow myself to reply when I'm still angry.

I'm going home now. I have to, sooner or later.

The dog is fine

As Luke, who should be my PA, explained, the dog is a lot better. He had cellulitis as a secondary thing to an allergic reaction to something, probably grass. He's on all kinds of medication, some of which got lost and was found in the fridge. My dad tried to pretend he'd done that on purpose.

And for the record, KIDSes (pronounced K-I-D-Ses) are undergraduate students. It comes from a fieldtrip (that I did not attend) where the lady in charge of catering got upset by someone's offensive language and yelled out "Don't say @%^$# in front of the KIDSes!"

It's been a very hectic few days, Saturday was Carla's kitchen tea, which was a lot of fun, but also quite crazy to set up as she was sick and hardly left the house all week (update: she's a lot better). So I ended up sitting in the kitchen, trying to tie bows on champagne glasses at something like 10:30 at night, rushing home, colapsing and then leaving super-early the next morning to cut bits of wire and arrange beads into boxes and so on.

The whole event was quite fun, very relaxed and quite tame compared to others that I've been to, but I'm pretty sure that was a good thing! So I got home afterwards and passed out on my bed to be woken 2 hours later by a phone call about another kitchen tea coming up. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! But I had to get up anyway to go to a 21st birthday party, where I ended up spending about 3 hours on a trampoline. I hurt the next day!

I was going to post whenI got home, but then I saw in the History on the home PC that someone in my immediate family is reading this, and it upset me. I don't know who it is, but I'd really appreciate it if they actually told me...

And then yesterday was running around like a maniac, giggling through pre-labs and the TAing a neverending flower-prac. Speaking of which, I have marking to do...

because I'm tired of reading

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

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

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

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

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

because I'm too lazy to post, and I don't want to annoy all my friends

Sarah just sent this to me. I generally don't like sending these around because I know a lot of people get annoyed by the 'send this back!' part. I'm also too lazy to make a real post because (short of going to a dress fitting, downloading articles and making a bead coaster) I've been pretty unproductive and have nothing interesting to say.

Here goes:

Remember to send yours back to the person who sent it to you!

a. Ever been so drunk you blacked out?
Once. I promised myself it would never happen again.

b. Put a body part on fire for amusement?
At work we used to pour Benzine on our hands and light it and then high-five the flam to each other. It was hot, but it didn't really burn us. It was so much fun!
c. Kept a secret from everyone?
Yes, I have quite a few. The trick is to keep quiet about the existence of said secret and then nobody bothers you about it.

d. Wanted to hook up with a friend?
Does making friends with someone because you wanted to hook up with them count?

e. Ever thought an animated character was hot?
The captain in Mulan...

f. Had a New Kids on the Block tape?
No

g. Been on stage?
A lot...

--- Favourites ---
a. Shampoo?
This stuff my mom got me that smelled like bubblegum. I've enver been able to find it again.

b. Soap?
The Clicks moisture burst range.

c. Colour?
Yellow and blue

d. Day/Night?
It depends on how much sleep I've been having

e. Summer/Winter?
Autumn

f. Favourite TV series?
Lost or Prison Break.

g. Food
Tomato soup, peanut butter curry, anything with creamed spinach and/or feta

h. Favourite Advert
that Cell C one where the lady keeps hurting herself.

i. Favourite Movie
The Boondock Saints, Thank You For Smoking

--- Right now ---
k. Eating?
I just had lunch, which was a chicken, lettuce and tomato sandwhich on wholewheat superhealthy bread.

j. Wearing?
Jeans, slops and a blue tshirt

l . HAIR is?
dark brown. Straightened at the moment thanks to my fantastic boss!

m. Drinking?
water

n. Thin king about?
Getting to work! Must. Stop. Procrastinating!

o. Listening to?
The new Faithless album. It's really awesome!

--- Last 24 Hours ---

q. Cried?
No
r. Meet ANY new FRIENDS?
yes
s. Cleaned your room?
no

--- Do you believe in ---
a. Yourself?
Not really
b. Your friends?
yes
c. Santa Claus?
not anymore. We used to booby-trap our rooms every christmas. I think the mousetrap in the Christmas stocking is what ended it for us.
d. Tooth Fairy?
I had the tooth mouse when I was small. I used to leave seeds for him with the tooth in a slipper by my door.
e. Destiny/Fate?
I think we make our own.
f. Angels?
Yes
g. Ghosts?
no
--- Friends and Life ---

a. Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend?
no. I think it's a good thing at the moment.

b. Who have u known the longest of your friends?
Cathy. we meet when I was 2 weeks old.

c. Who's the shyest?
probably Lynne.

d. Who's the weirdest?
that's about a 20-way tie. We're scientists...

e. Who do you go to for advice?
Lara, sometimes Jo.

f. When do you cry the most
When I'm stressed out.

________________________________________________________

resolution #43: I will be antisocial

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

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

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

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

Sounds like fun.

I'm such a Scrooge!

I haven't blogged forever. I'm sorry, but being so unproductive tends to leave me feeling extraordinarily guilty and I hate to admit it anywhere!

Last week was vry unproductive. I did do some stuff. Like go shopping for wedding gifts for two of the three weddings coming up, going to spend some quality time with my boss (who is one of very few people in this world who can straigthen my hair without the associated Diana Ross effect (i.e. it comes out smooth and un-poofy). I nearly fainted at a dress fitting and realised that if I'm going to stand for a whole ceremony I have to practice wearing the shoes more often. I also put a whole to-do list for the month togther, finalised some things with my supervisor and organised all my readings into folders. All the while spending a huge amount of time at Biosoc.

The thing is, my project has to be divided into 'chapters' and it's really hard to focus on each thing all alone. so I was wheelspinning because I dodn't know where to start. I hope this helps, because otherwise I'm deregistering and taking a one-way flight to Russia or something to hide from allo the people who have been so supportive.

Thursday was Luke's birthday. I gave him a jar of marshmallow spread in the morning and we went shopping for a present for Laura and got falafels for lunch. I also went along to the zoo and went inside the room with the lizard display. Sungazers are SO cute! They also showed distinct evidence for appetitive behaviour and learning... probably just my anthropomorphism shining through, but hearing the keeper arrive and running over to where the food dish usually goes is pretty obvious.

On Thursday night I went to Primi in melsrose arch for Luke's birthday. I got there first and ended up reprising my role as Luke's PA when I was shown around by the waiters and chose an area to book. It was a real awkward-turtle moment! It was a really nice and chilled evening, we sat around and chatted and drank teapots and took bizarre photos.

Friday I decided to be productive, so I sat and organised my readings, helped out some honours students with a variety of things, went to an awesome talk on Macaws in south america and went off to biosoc. After that I went home, changed and headed out to the other side of the world to Laura's birthday bash. It was also fun, albeit mildly awkward at first considering I got there before anyone that I actually knew, but I got to know a few people and it was fun. the place was strange. It had couches and things to sit and chat, but the music was really loud so it was chatting by way of screeching things to your neighbour and repeating yourself a lot. I also got them to make me a special drink that Joey always makes me, so Luke, Laura and I ended up with blue tongues. More hilarious photos followed.

Today I woke up feeling horrible, staggered over to Joeys house so she could do my hair, came home and collapsed for half and hour and headed of to a wedding. I really didn't want to go, but I'm so glad I did! It was a stunning wedding. I'm not generally prone to the whole girly 'awww' reflex, but seeing two people whon I really care about glowing and crying and really meaning what they said was so special. As someone who has been to literally dozens of weddings (when you're little and you sing, people make you perform at weddings for the pure kitsch factor) today was really really special.

So now I feel like a total Scrooge in the way I've been treating my brother's upcoming wedding. I'm really excited for it now, not just because I get to have a really fantastic girl as a sister, but because it really is worth all the fuss.

Anyway, I must be off, the reception starts in an hour and I have no idea where the place is...