I nearly forgot to put a title in

Today is Tuesday the 15th of December. But in New Zealand it is the 16th already. Isn't that crazy? Anyway I am telling you the day firstly because I just can't get over that it is Tuesday, it definately feels like a Monday to me. And secondly so you can understand just how hectic things are.

So last Wednesday we all bussed up to Belfast and spent two hectic days listening to people talk about their research, and got back late on Friday night. Saturday should have been spent sleeping, because before the Belfast trip I had a hectic week with Mum and before that even was very busy looking up tours and making plans, and after everything I was very run-down and got a cold. But instead of sleeping I went shopping and brought boots (because you have to have two pairs you know, one for walking in and one with heels for looking nice in). And it was very cold outside. Then Sunday I came into work because after Belfast my supervisor was so full of ideas I felt that I needed to get a headstart, plus the barnacles need to be fed.

So what did I do on Monday? I don't know, but it went by so fast that it is as if it just didn't happen. I did a lot of reading, to be prepared for a supervisor meeting. And when it happened it was not at all what I expected - now that the workshop is over she has gone back to wanting results right now, on her desk before she even thinks of it. Plus she has been given more ideas that she wants us to follow through on despite the fact that most of them are huge undertakings and some of them could be PhD theses all by themselves.

Then the big task before going to Vienna is to get cement out of these stupid barnacles. But this is actually what we have been trying to do all along and it is just not happening. She want images of it and we keep taking photos and she doesn't want any of them. She wants us to get uncured glue - which would mean collecting the cement while it is still a liquid, as soon as it comes out of the barnacle. Once again, a task we have been working on for weeks. Yes we are going to Vienna in less than four weeks, but that doesn't mean that things are just going to suddenly start working.

So speaking of Vienna it is all happening very fast. In less than four weeks I will be arriving in a new city, a very large city, where they speak a language that I barely know, and where things are too far away to walk to, you have to take trains. And right now we are busy booking flights and sorting out the accommodation, which was suppossed to be all sorted out for us and sure we don't have to pay for any of it but I guess my supervisor just figures that all the donkey-work should be left to us, that is what we are here for after all.

And then tomorrow is Wednesday and there is the department Christmas party on, so I will probably not even have the full day for work because I will have to go home to get changed and I live far away so these things have to be taken into consideration. Also it may last until the early hours of the morning. Which is not a big deal, but today we found out that on Thursday the navy people are going out on a boat to bring in some sort of data buoy, which we hope will have barnacles on it. And this is happening in Donegal, about a 4 hour drive away. And the boat will be going out at 8am. So we may just be leaving Galway at 4am, Thursday morning. And the Christmas party will probably continue on into Thursday morning? Perhaps we will be going straight from one to the other!

Then on Sunday I am off for Abu Dhabi for Christmas! After I return it will be a week and a half before Vienna. Before Vienna we hope to have cement to look at, both in Vienna with the big fancy microscopes, and to send to Germany for protein stuff, and we have to have everything organised for the student that is coming to take care of the barnacles, and we have this slight problem of the embryos not surviving which is also pretty bad. If the embryo's don't survive there will be no larvae, and no larvae mean no baby-barnacles. Which right now I don't much care about but my supervisor definately does (she doesn't quite know that the larvae situation has gone from bad to worse).

And did you know that I will have to write a letter to immigration every time I move address here in Galway? So I will have to do that since I am moving to Austria for four months.

So this week life seems very hectic, there is a lot to organise and not much time to do it in (or so it seems).

But on the up side, it isn't raining! It is very strange. It hasn't rained in days! Just been frosty. Really really frosty, it is so cold. But not wet, so yay. I guess the talk of constant rain is a bit of an exaggeration. People seem prone to that here.

Anyway I think it is really time to go home now. It is dark, though that doesn't mean much it gets dark at 4pm.

Photos of Belfast

So I didn't manage to have time to take photo's in Belfast. So for now I will just steal some off of the internet so that everybody can see how pretty it was.



Anyway, the second day of the conference was also very long, and the funders were boring but the rest was really interesting. It was a rush to get to the bus on time but we made it, and the trip home was good. I was so tired by the time I got back though.

And it turns out that I misunderstood about the tickets, I thought it was all sorted but and that somebody else had my ticket but I was wrong, which means that I got a free ride from Galway to Dublin the other day (yesterday when I realised I had to buy a ticket for the way home of course, but still I got one free ride). Woops.

Also after talking to all the interesting people at the workshop my supervisor suddenly has a ton of new ideas about what we should be doing with the barnacles. If we actually followed through on all her ideas I think I would be doing my PhD for 10 years.

More about Belfast

So last night I went for a walk to find the university and things, so today we will all know where we are going. Belfast, it turns out, is the place with the docks where they built the Titanic. Also if you want to see the Giant's causeway you have to come up here, so I will have to visit Northern Ireland again one day. Also, it is Belfast and Northern Ireland where there is so much trouble over religion. You see, Ireland is Catholic so that's okay, they all agree there. But England is Protestant, and Northern Ireland has always been about half and half. So just like they can't agree on whether they want to be Ireland or UK they don't agree on religion. And they all live together in the one place. And each won't accept the other, they want them to leave. So for the past 20 years or so (I think it was worst in 80s) there have been gangs and groups that cause trouble, terrorise and throw bombs and things. It was called The Troubles and was largely about whether they should be UK or Ireland, so it is better since they agreed to be neither. Now there are just a couple of extremist groups I think but they still cause trouble. And that is also the deal with the Orange order, who are the protestants. They have a parade every year or something like that. Anyway, that's the deal with Northern Ireland.

Anyway enough of all that. This morning we didn't have to be anywhere too early so I took my time over breakfast. This is a very nice B&B, the breakfast's are all very good, and there's loads of it if only you had the appetite for it. The workshop seemed very long to me - the first couple of talks were a bit dull, then there were some good ones, and then they seemed to get worse. I thought most of the PhD talks this afternoon were not very good but my supervisor does not agree. I think we are talking about different things though. I think that the talks were not good as far as presentation goes, while she thinks that they were good in that they have some big results so early into their PhDs. But they were all very similar which was a problem. Who would have thought that so many people study sponges? And they all seem to study the same thing about sponges too. It is hard to say though, which is were their presentations were lacking. I can remember bits and pieces, but none of them really managed to make their project stand out. And they all kept repeating one another, you would think that after a couple they would just skim over what has been said and get more into their specific stuff. But no, they had to barrel on through their planned talk no matter how repetitive they were being. Perhaps I should not be so harsh but they are mostly from the same university so you think they would have some idea of what the others are doing, and also I was rather bored by the end of the day.

So anyway that is all very boring and tomorrow will be just as full on. After the talks I went shopping with some other people from Galway, from the Marine Institute (which is not the same one that I work at) and Belfast is a very cool city. The buildings are big and very impressive, it is very British looking here. The shopping centre was all lit up and there was this big sort of palace-y building with a market around it, also all lit up, and a big ferris wheel. It was called the continental market and it was a shame that we had to go back for the dinner because it looked really interesting and was full of all sorts of yummy looking food. The lights and decorations amazing. I will have to come back up here next Christmas if I can to see it all again properly, since there wasn't time this year.

So to get to the end of the day, there was a dinner put on by the workshop. Only it wasn't put on because we had to pay for ourselves. It was a Japanese restaurant called Zen 2 and it was nice, but a little disorganised. Dinner was at 8, and they didn't seat us straight away (and when they did it was cramped and there were not enough seats, despite the big long empty table in the middle of the room), and by the time they began to take orders it was 9. The food was really good and the people were good to talk to, we didn't finish until 11 (and there was no desert, I think because we were there so late. But who seated us so late in the first place? The restaurant did.). So it was a very long day. Now it is late because there was yet more talking after dinner and on the way home.

In the morning we start at 9, and before that we have to have had breakfast and checked out. It finishes earlier tomorrow but starts earlier so really it will be just as long a day, and after that we have to get back to Galway. I will be so glad of the weekend, although with looking after barnacles I don't really just get to stay home in bed (like I said, they are all the responsibility of a pet without all the fun). The bus ride will be no rest either because all the people to talk to have given my supervisor all sorts of information and ideas so tomorrows bus ride will be all work talk.

Hopefully I will have some photos to post tomorrow of Belfast.

Belfast

Today was spent on busses on the way to Belfast. I had to make myself get out of bed as soon as my alarm went off because last night I got distracted and didn't end up packing. I made bikkies instead. So this morning I had to get up, pack, and get myself to uni so that I could get the barnacles fed before leaving. Just like having a pet really, except not as fun. They are just not sentient enough for my liking. I have never felt the need to have pet fish and now I have a heap of barnacles to keep alive. They are interesting enough to look at, but far more of a decoration than a pet.

So I go the barnacles fed and left a note for the honours student who is looking after them while we are away. Then had to get to the bus stop which is alway further than you think, but we made it on time and the bus didn't leave right away anyway. That bus to Dublin is so fancy. It's double decker and has really comfortable seats, and the seats at the front of the bus are facing each other with a table in between, how cool is that? And the bus has wireless internet! Plus it is a non-stop service so it seemed really fast. There were four of us - myself, my supervisor, and two other PhD students. We talked most of the way, quite a lot about science and quite a lot about the Antarctica because of this lecture that was on yesterday and because one of the PhD students has been there diving and stuff. I would love to go. So other people might have been bored by our conversation but I thought it was quite a good trip. I took my knitting, I am knitting a shawl out of this really fluffy sor of sparkly wook, sort of a fawn/gold colour. And I had the bikkies that I baked last night which of course everybody loved.

At Dublin airport we changed bus and the second bus was just fine but not at all fancy. Once again most of the ride was spent talking, but we were all starting to feel quite tired I think, the way travelling makes you. It starts getting dark so early aswell, which leaves you feeling like it is late and bed-time already.

So we finally left the Republic of Ireland and entered Northern Ireland. My supervisor explained to me how it all works. It turns out that it isn't a part of the UK anymore, so I am not in the UK. It isn't part of Ireland though either, it has it's own parliment. It is supported by both Dublin and London but leans more towards London. It seems that while a good proportion of the Northern Irelanders would like to be part of Ireland, just as many want to be a part of the UK, so they can't really choose because either way would piss off too many people. Instead they will probably end up becoming their own separate state.

The country side looks different, though of course I am no expert (not yet anyway). It is still farmland but more green rolling hills, less bogland and big rocky areas. Instead of stone walls around the fields there are hedges. The city of Belfast also looks different, but it is hard for me to say for sure. My supervisor tells me it looks very different from Ireland here, more like London. It does look different from Galway but Galway is a smaller city and very medieval, so perhaps it is not a good comparison? I will have to see Dublin properly before I can really say. The buildings are taller though, and the roads are proper roads. The cars are also different, the cabs look like the British ones that you see on the tele, and some of them are black like in England. The accent is strange, I couldn't Also they use the pound here so I will have to get out some money in case I need anything (and so that I have pounds because having foreign money is fun). I haven't got any decent photos yet, only blurry in the dark ones, and probably won't have time to get any. I will have to come back up here one day instead.
So soon we are going out for a meal, and the next couple of days will be very busy. Luckily the workshop does not start too early. Before it is time to meet for dinner I will have to go down to the reception and see if I can get some bandaids, because my new boots have caused a couple of blisters. The are the type of boot that you can tuck your jeans into so I am trying that, I mean everybody else does it and it does keep the hem of your pants nice and dry in the rain. This hotel is also very nice, though I am not actually sure if it is a hotel or a B&B. My room is large, the bed is big and very comfortable, the bathroom is large. It has no bath, only a shower, but that is okay (yet among the free toiletries is bath salts?).
There is not much in the way of free stuff to swipe, just some soap and lotions, your general tea and coffee, a couple of bikkies. No hot chocolate so I can't even make use of the little kettle. There is free wireless which is always great. I would like to see if the other rooms are as nice, you see another supervisor was supposed to come with us but cancelled so maybe I have her room and it is fancier than what would generally be given to a student? We will see. It is a shame that it gets dark so early, it is only 5.30 but too dark to go out and see anything.

And what would you know but my bag has broken. Trust Mum to bring me a shoddy bag. The zip broke and won't go back together so I will have to find some big safety pins. And I was going to take it to Abu Dhabi too, so I didn't have to take an actual suitcase.

Student accommodation is cause for a good rant

So anyway you know how I was saying how ridiculous the cost of laundry is at the place I live? Well these student apartments are called Dunaras, and you would think laundry would be free but it isn't. So when I want to do washing I have to first go to the office and by a token for the machine because they are not even coin operated. And this is a problem because the office is only open from 9 till 6 and closes at lunchtime, but I am usually at Uni by 9, and I don't go back during the day because is is a 25 minute walk, and I am usually not home before 6. So in order to get to the office I have to be late for Uni, or leave early.

So I go in the morning, and this has happened about 3 times now just so you know, and I try not to be early but still I am stuck waiting because the office guy is never on time. Not only are their opening hours completely unsuitable to a normal university schedule but he can't even be on time. It's not like he has to be there at 8 or on weekends or anything, how hard is it to be on time? Especially seeing as he lives either inside the complex or right behind it, I'm not sure, but it's pretty close. Because you see, I am waiting there outside the office and when he finally shows up he comes through a gate about halfway down the complex (so maybe 100 metres at the most?). And his car is parked right there so obviously he lives right through that gate.

And what does he do then? You won't believe it.

He gets in his car and drives up to the office!

It would take him what, 1 minute to walk to the office? But he drives. Even if it is raining you would barely get wet walking between that gate and the office. No wonder he's a bit chubby. And it's not like it was a one-off thing either, I've seen this more than once. How can you drive to work when you live at work? How lazy is that.

It always rains on me

So who would have thought that it could be not rainy for 5 whole days! But it was, so Mum did not get rained on while she was here. Now last night I was walking home, after a day of on-off showers, and it is terribly windy. I brought boots yesterday (yay) so I was walking home with a stupid bulky shopping bag because boots come in such a big box. And it is terribly windy so I have to hold my shopping bag up close to my side because it was just blowing everywhere, meaning that I can't keep my hands in my pockets so they are getting freezing cold. So what happens next? It starts raining of course. But not just any rain. No, it is terrible wind-driven sharp cold rain. Far too windy to even think about getting out the umbrella, you just have to let yourself get wet. Which I did. Luckily the shopping bag kept my body dry but my legs and arms got soaked and my hands were so numb with cold that I had trouble getting in the door. It was a miserable walk home.

But I have new boots which is nice. My pay cheque didn't go through you see because someone at the finance office fucked up. So I should have been paid two weeks ago, and instead my supervisor has loaned me the money at of some grant money or something that has been squirreled away. Maybe even her own money but it sounded like it must be from University money. And I have met somebody else who also had problems with their first pay, and she in turn knows of at least a half dozen people who have had the same problem. You would hope that somebody is getting seriously reprimanded over this. But they probably aren't.

Anyway I have the money now, although the cheque hasn't cleared. It should by tomorrow.I brought boots, and I have to pay for my Christmas travel, and other than that try not to buy lots of stuff. I have to keep in mind that I have to be able to pack everything up to take to Austria so I really need to try not to buy lots of stuff.

I worked for most of the weekend although I didn't get much done. I intended to do reading but I ended up spending a lot of time organising my files. The barnacles don't seem very healthy, their shells are beginning to look sort of see-through, like they are decalcifying or something. But other than putting some sort of supplement in the water we don't know what can be done about that. Don't have to do a poster any more.

Tried some histology over the weekend. Basically, we took one of the fixed (preserved) barnacles, and embedded it in agar, which is just like really thick jelly. Then we put it in this machine called a vibrotome, and tell it what thickness we want our sections to be, and then push a button, and it cuts a slice. And you keep doing that until the whole thing was cut up. And you put each slice on a microscope slide. But it didn't really work so I don't yet have any photos to show you. The outside was fixed properly but the insides were still too soft, so instead of being cut they just got all mushed up. And it's the insides that we want to look at, so just didn't work. And then the slide is supposed to be dried out, but after drying they just looked all crusty which is not supposed to happen, and not sure why that is. Possibly because we cut sections of about 300 micron (which is 0.3 of a mm) when other people usually cut stuff at 10 micron. Or maybe we overdried them? And then staining did not work either, it is supposed to just stain bits of tissue and wash off of everything else but it didn't wash off. But still, it was interesting. It doesn't really matter that it didn't work, I will be learning it all properly in Vienna soon enough.

Today the new PhD student arrived from Malaysia so now our lab will be really full for awhile. He seems to be really on-top of things. He agrees with me that it is cold here and also that some things here are really weird. Like the normal working day here is not 9 till 5. The bank isn't open 9 till 5, isn't that crazy? It is open from 10 till 4, 5 if you're lucky, and it's more than likely that at lunchtime they will just close for an hour. And it is so annoying. Also when people here ask if you would like to go for tea, they mean a cup of tea. Like instead of saying go for a coffee or a drink. I keep getting confused and thinking that they mean the meal, not just a drink.

On Wednesday there is this workshop to go to. 7 hours on a bus with my supervisor and the other PhD student. It will be interesting. And then again on the way back on Friday. The workshop itself will be pretty full on, one and a half days and 36 talks! Hopefully they will all be interesting. But how are you supposed to meet any of your colleagues at these things when you are being bombarded with lectures? It's not like it's a conference, it's just a workshop.

Also I have decided that since I am going to Austria and Germany and the big collaborators are in Austria and Germany that I should learn to speak German. I have downloaded pod-casts to listen to on my i-pod and some free e-books, and we will see how that goes. I will begin listening to them tonight. It will be very cool if I can arrive in Austria able to speak some of the language.

So I have to go home and do washing and stuff so things are all tidy before going away for a couple of days. You would think that in paying so much for a student accommodation the laundrette would be free wouldn't you? But it's not, its 4euro for one wash. That's like 8 dollars! For just one wash. What a rip-off. At least in Austria I don't have to pay for my own accommodation, I am so looking forward to it. I will be going in one month, I am to begin to look for good flights from any time after the 7th of January.

Now what is the chances that as soon as I pack up to go home it will begin to rain? Pretty high I would say.

Mum's Visit to Ireland

Well, today is Thursday and Mum has gone back to the UAE. This week has been so incredibly busy and I am very tired. Work will also be busy for the next week. And of course it is only about three weeks until Christmas and then I will be going to Austria. Perhaps I am just going to always be busy forever now?

Anyway on Monday I took Mum to see Galway and we went for a walk around Galway Bay. First we went to the big cathedral which is right beside Uni. I have never been in before, I wasn't sure if you were just allowed to go in for a look. It is so impressive though, I have never been is such a big pretty church. I lovew all the stained glass windows. If I had to choose a religion I would base it on the prettiness of the church, because then I would have something nice to look at.


There is always a very large number of birds around the docks, swans and gulls mainly, and sometimes you see people feeding them. So we took my loaf of stale bread and we fed the birds. Only we were completely mobbed, those birds really wanted our bread. There was a pile of pigeons at our feet, they are so tame that when I wanted to walk through they didn't fly off, I had to shove them aside with my foot. Then there were all these gulls swooping around our heads, just sort of hovering, and catching the bread in midair before it could get anywhere near the poor old swans. And these huge swans are just sort of sitting there in the water waiting, getting some bread every now and then, but they also had gulls swooping around them and even landing on their backs. So when the bread was all finished we got out of there because having birds flying right around your head is a bit freaky.



The rest of that day was not quite so amusing. I am not saying it was bad - it's just that the birds were really funny. We went for a walk around the bay, and the weather was clear but freezing cold. Still, nearly a whole week of clear weather has been a bit strange. We had a quick look at some shops, went to a tea-house, went to a restaurant suggested by a friend for dinner, and then went to see a show. The tea-house was called Griffin's Bakery and was really cute, a lot of the buildings here a little old medieval buildings, the ceilings are low and the doorways are really small. The restaurant was called McSwiggans and I was expecting a pub, but it was a bit fancier than that. We went up about four flights of stairs for one thing, the buildings here are sort of poky and winding, due to being so old, with a lot of small levels instead of a proper first floor and second floor. So despite all the staircases I think we were only one floor up. Everything is all old wood and stone, and a lot of the establishments have stories and a history behind them. For instance the bakery is the oldest family-owned business in Galway, or something like that.


The show that we went to is worth a mention. It was these brothers who won the Irish talent show last year, which is like that show America's got talent. They play Irish music and sing and dance, but they are very young. The youngest looked about 7 or 8, and played two instruments, sung and danced. So they were very impressive and it was quite entertaining, and makes you want to learn irish dancing and to play the fiddle. And of course Mum managed to find another cat to pat.


On Tuesday Mum and I did another tour, this one of Connemara. This is a region inside of Galway county, and is primarily made up of farmland, bog-land, lakes and mountains.

First we stopped at an old ruined friary. It was a really good stop, I would have like to spend a bit longer there. It was rainy but that was okay. There were only five people on the tour, and the tour guide was very informative and full of information. I was very tired though.


We drove by a big old castle which is now and fancy hotel and then s stopped at a village where the filmed some film that I have never heard of but is apparently very good, starring John Wayne. It was a cute village, but it was cold and Mum was the last to get back to the bus, we were all waiting for her.


The tour went through a lot of farmland which is very different to any you would see in NZ. We stopped to look at things like round-towers, a ring-fort, a fairy-tree and a stone-circle (which is in the photo below), but we did not get out of the bus at those stops. I think because the things that we were looking at were on private property. They are things that are pretty common in the Irish countryside.


The main stop was Kylemore Abbey, which is now a school for girls run by the Benedictine nuns. It was originally built as a castle, and the nuns have opened three rooms to the public, which are all done up as close to their original state as possible. Of course you pay an entrance fee to get in and there is a restaurant and souvenir shop for tourists to spend all their money in. It wasn't as impressive a stop as the Cliffs but was still quite nice.


There was a walled victorian garden. It was interesting but really it was still just a garden. There is a neo-gothic church, which didn't seem overly impressive it wasn't bad. I mean in New Zealand you don't see churches which are full of marble and carved figures with big stained glass windows. Lastly there was a mausoleum, which is really just a little stone building all completely closed up (as is to be expected considering that there is an embalmed body inside). All in all it was a pretty good tour, a much slower day than the Cliffs tour. Between the two though I am definately all tourist-ed out.


Yesterday was almost as tiring as going on a tour. I went into work in the morning, and then in the afternoon we went to see more of the city, look in some of the interesting shops and do souvineer shopping. We ate a lot. We did today as well actually. Ireland may be lacking in the familiar junk food but they are very big on their bakeries, their tarts especially, and pastries and cakes. We brought souvineers and Mum brought christmas stuff - some headbands with bobbly santa heads, earrings, hair clips and you won't believe it but she brought santa outfits for her cats! She expects me to help her take a christmas photo of them when I go to Abu Dhabi in a few weeks. We went to a pub called the King's Head for dinner, another poky medieval building with a history - apparently Charles I was beheaded there or something like that. I can't quite remember.


Anyway as I said it has been a few very tiring days. Today after popping briefly into work to feed the barnacles we went into town again to see the Eyre Square market which was not open any of the previous days. You see they built the shopping centre around the old town walls, which have something to do with the Anglo-Norman's that invaded Ireland at some point in history and set up camp in Galway. So there are these big stone walls and two towers inside the shopping centre which are not some new thing built for show but actually the old town walls. Crazy ay. They have a little market in there, stalls of local produce mainly. Mum brought a couple of last souvenirs for herself and then we had to get going so that she could get to the airport. Despite being quite organised we had to repack her case and then we couldn't find stuff and while she left with plenty of time to spare I have a messy house to clean up.


So now the week is nearly over and I have to get back to work. There is so much to do in the next week. Tomorrow I will be doing some basic histology, learning how to use a machine called a vibrotome which will slice a barnacle sample into to tiny little sections. Yet despite being tiny they might still be too thick to see anything. But at least we will know how to use the machine. And then the sections have to be stained so that you can actually see stuff like cells and muscles. Then all the sections have to be looked at, there will probably be a couple of hundred.

On top of that all of a sudden the barnacle larvae we are trying to rear are just not surviving all of a sudden and I don't know why, and the adult barnacles are not very healthy either. The last thing I need is for them to all die on me, that would just screw up everything. And then my supervisor suddenly wants a poster for this workshop next week, when I have been asking all along if she would like something like that. So now she does and it is about 6 days away. And what results are there to put in a poster anyway? None. So it will just be like an introductory poster, maybe with some aims. Also because of the whole intellectual property thing we are not to actually let anybody know what species we are working on, it is a secret! So that nobody can steal our idea and finish the work before us! It seems a bit paranoid. But good new is the things being looked at by the collaborators in Vienna and Bremen seems to be going well, although it has seemed so before and been misleading. We will wait and see I guess.

So like I said, busy busy busy.