October News
Oh boy, it seems I left it too long between writing and now there's too much to write about! Where to start...
Well, I think last time I wrote we were planning to go to Adelaide for the weekend. That went almost according to plan - Christina went to Adelaide, and I got messed around by Tiger Airlines to such an extreme degree that I failed to make it past the airport. A combination of appalling customer service and preposterous regulations (like failing to mention that they close the boarding gate 45 mins prior to takeoff for a domestic flight) left me grounded while Christina flew off on Qantas for a weekend of astro tours and wine routes in South Australia. It was, needless to say, a distinctly disappointing experience on my side but fortunately Christina had a splendid trip - shortly after arriving she and Caro went for a drive with our old family friends Denise and Neil, and the first thing they saw was a koala crossing the road. With a baby on its back. And then they spent the rest of the day drinking excellent wines in the countryside around Adelaide.
I stayed in for most of the weekend and watched the entire first season of "24".
Otherwise, it's been work as usual. Some interesting seminars and a little bit of headway made on my project. We had a visiting academic from Stellenbosch who specialises in invasive species and their ecosystem implications, and a fascinating PhD final talk by a guy who's researching fish assemblages in Port Philip Bay over the past 60 years. So there is at least some compensation for all the great seminars in Cape Town that I'm sad to be missing!
Campus seems to be astir with stressed undergrads at the moment - I think that there are exams or something looming? I'm also noticing a disturbing resurgence of 80s fashion - it seems that the current decade has more in common with that one than a financial distaster in the 7th year. There is altogether too much neon, spandex and big hair about.
Much more importantly, last week was Christina's birthday, so we've been celebrating for a week solid. On the actual day we had phone calls from various friends and relations and the day after we went out for dinner and then to a show on campus by a Melbourne Uni group called Flare Dance. It was great - an interesting panoply of styles, ranging from hip-hop to ballet, and all performed and choreographed by students. I heard about it because a colleague of mine in Zoology was performing, and it seems that most of the dancers (like her) are actually doing degrees other than dance or theatre. It was great fun, even for those who have had their expectations of dance raised to impossible heights by Jazzart shows...
The birthday celebrations culminated on Saturday in a high tea (although I think Christina more frankly called it a "sugarfest" in the invitations) with about 25 people squashed into our flat. A great mix of Swinburne astro people and friends from church, and a total excess of cakes and tarts. I had baked an orange/chocolate cake, Christina had made milktart and lemon-meringue pie, her colleague Andy (who is the chairman of the Melbourne Uni climbing club, despite being a Swinburne PhD student) made an extraordinary strawberry and rhubarb cheesecake, and we went for a long stroll later to work some of it off. Good times.
What else... We had the AGM at church yesterday after the service, and there was a prize for the best dressed - so we went in black tie (me) and ballgown (Christina). And we won a golden chocolate frog, which may not sound that impressive, but it's basically a slab of exquisite deliciousness made by a local expert chocolatier... as if we hadn't had enough sugar this weekend already. Another walk may be called for.
As a complete aside, I've been getting a lot of reading done on the train and tram rides to and from work - sometimes papers, but often fiction. In the process I've read some great books, but also gotten a lot of strange looks - it so happened that the book I started with (and took about 2 months to read) was a collection of travels by Andrew Mueller, a journalist (originally Australian but working from London) who spends most of his time in troublesome spots. It was a splendid read, but it features on the cover a huge picture of a hand grenade with a map of the world on it - just the sort of thing you want to be reading on public transport and taking through airport security. Today I was reading the first volume of Spike Milligan's excellent diaries of his WWII service, which is also a lovely book. However, it's entitled "Adolf Hitler: My part in his downfall", and has the first two words of the title in giant font, above a photo of Milligan's own face to which he's added the toothbrush moustache and emo-styled fringe more famously sported by the Fuhrer...
Anyway. Let me stop before I babble too much more. Christina and I are starting to teach social dancing at St. Columbs tonight, so I need to get some work done first.
Well, I think last time I wrote we were planning to go to Adelaide for the weekend. That went almost according to plan - Christina went to Adelaide, and I got messed around by Tiger Airlines to such an extreme degree that I failed to make it past the airport. A combination of appalling customer service and preposterous regulations (like failing to mention that they close the boarding gate 45 mins prior to takeoff for a domestic flight) left me grounded while Christina flew off on Qantas for a weekend of astro tours and wine routes in South Australia. It was, needless to say, a distinctly disappointing experience on my side but fortunately Christina had a splendid trip - shortly after arriving she and Caro went for a drive with our old family friends Denise and Neil, and the first thing they saw was a koala crossing the road. With a baby on its back. And then they spent the rest of the day drinking excellent wines in the countryside around Adelaide.
I stayed in for most of the weekend and watched the entire first season of "24".
Otherwise, it's been work as usual. Some interesting seminars and a little bit of headway made on my project. We had a visiting academic from Stellenbosch who specialises in invasive species and their ecosystem implications, and a fascinating PhD final talk by a guy who's researching fish assemblages in Port Philip Bay over the past 60 years. So there is at least some compensation for all the great seminars in Cape Town that I'm sad to be missing!
Campus seems to be astir with stressed undergrads at the moment - I think that there are exams or something looming? I'm also noticing a disturbing resurgence of 80s fashion - it seems that the current decade has more in common with that one than a financial distaster in the 7th year. There is altogether too much neon, spandex and big hair about.
Much more importantly, last week was Christina's birthday, so we've been celebrating for a week solid. On the actual day we had phone calls from various friends and relations and the day after we went out for dinner and then to a show on campus by a Melbourne Uni group called Flare Dance. It was great - an interesting panoply of styles, ranging from hip-hop to ballet, and all performed and choreographed by students. I heard about it because a colleague of mine in Zoology was performing, and it seems that most of the dancers (like her) are actually doing degrees other than dance or theatre. It was great fun, even for those who have had their expectations of dance raised to impossible heights by Jazzart shows...
The birthday celebrations culminated on Saturday in a high tea (although I think Christina more frankly called it a "sugarfest" in the invitations) with about 25 people squashed into our flat. A great mix of Swinburne astro people and friends from church, and a total excess of cakes and tarts. I had baked an orange/chocolate cake, Christina had made milktart and lemon-meringue pie, her colleague Andy (who is the chairman of the Melbourne Uni climbing club, despite being a Swinburne PhD student) made an extraordinary strawberry and rhubarb cheesecake, and we went for a long stroll later to work some of it off. Good times.
What else... We had the AGM at church yesterday after the service, and there was a prize for the best dressed - so we went in black tie (me) and ballgown (Christina). And we won a golden chocolate frog, which may not sound that impressive, but it's basically a slab of exquisite deliciousness made by a local expert chocolatier... as if we hadn't had enough sugar this weekend already. Another walk may be called for.
As a complete aside, I've been getting a lot of reading done on the train and tram rides to and from work - sometimes papers, but often fiction. In the process I've read some great books, but also gotten a lot of strange looks - it so happened that the book I started with (and took about 2 months to read) was a collection of travels by Andrew Mueller, a journalist (originally Australian but working from London) who spends most of his time in troublesome spots. It was a splendid read, but it features on the cover a huge picture of a hand grenade with a map of the world on it - just the sort of thing you want to be reading on public transport and taking through airport security. Today I was reading the first volume of Spike Milligan's excellent diaries of his WWII service, which is also a lovely book. However, it's entitled "Adolf Hitler: My part in his downfall", and has the first two words of the title in giant font, above a photo of Milligan's own face to which he's added the toothbrush moustache and emo-styled fringe more famously sported by the Fuhrer...
Anyway. Let me stop before I babble too much more. Christina and I are starting to teach social dancing at St. Columbs tonight, so I need to get some work done first.
posted by Sentinel at
9:23 PM
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