Sore Feet and Old Buildings

Cambridge is FANTASTIC, if not a wee bit too big and walking WAY too much. The buildings are like stuff from a film set. It really is impressive. But when you've stand for about 3 hours next to your poster and then walk around, it's a bit tiring.

Only hing I have to complain is that they don't have hot water in the showers. Grrrr. I know Cambridge is an old city and all but still.

Anyway, James is supposed to be cooking for us now. And Pete needs to check his email. If I survive James' cooking I'll update this later ;)

Brush walks

I know! I've been to a few brush walks over here in Bonsall. It's scary really, to think I'm actually doing some walking. PROPER walking. Pete took a picture of me while we were there, and I'll have to show that to people. :)

Last day in Bonsall really, tomorrow it's back to Cambridge. Probably do more reporting goodness while I'm there. :)

Right now though, I'm a wee bit too tired to keep typing. :P

Time Warp

Yes I'm in England, in case you're wondering. :)

It's been about 4 days now, and I think I'm slowly adjusting to the time differences. All 11 hours of it. The key is to actually not sleep even if you're tired until the sky is dark. I can't wait til I'm back to NZ and do this all over again (*sarcasm*).

Anyway, England is fantastic so far. Seen lots of old houses that were built when NZ is still inhabited by kiwis, the birds. Weather's a bit sad though, as one would expect in England.

Been to Cambridge when we first arrive. And it was SO pretty. So very pretty. Although knowing me and how picky I am when it comes to bathrooms and stuff... I probably won't want to live there. But just going around and all it's really great. I'll take more picture when I'm back there in a few day's time.

Right now I'm in this little village called Bonsall, where Pete's uncle and his family lives. Again, it's SO pretty. Stone houses everywhere, and it's just so... England. :) We've been around to a few big houses (and by big I meant HUGE, in captials) and a village church, and it's been great.

Food wise it's not too bad. We've only really ate at a pub once, but I can see more of that happening once we're back in Cambridge. Really should learn to drink better but meh: I'll take it one day at a time.

That's it from me for now. It's been another rainy day here, but we might head to a pub for dinner tonight and see how things go. :)

Last minute packing

I got a feeling I finish packing... well almost. Besides all those stuff like toothbrush which I have to pack last minutes.

Other than that: I'm all good to go. I just need to relax a bit... :P

Will try to update this when I'm away. If I can't, I'll update this when I get back. :P

To pack, or not to pack...

I'm the kind of people who stress about everything. Especially when it come to overseas trip. Now I'm thinking I should start packing, but there are a lot of things you can't pack until the last minutes you know, like toothbrush, or even my shampoo and stuff. But then if I've already packed 3 days in advance then maybe I wouldn't remember them since I would have the impression that I've already packed. ARGH! The dilemma!

Other things I stress about include little things like how to get my daily dose of tea, whether they'll mess up the baggages, how I'm going to survive in Paris without speaking French, how to check my email over there... the list is endless :P I' should be able to update my blog using my mobile though... I think. I hope. :P

Still ridiculously tired, mainly because I've been out every night for the.. I dunno... probably 5 nights in a row actually. Wow. But I get to sleep in today, and that's good. :) And I got a feeling I'll start packing, just in case.

Move along now, nothing to see here.

Claiming my territory

Life as a PhD in a department where there's nowhere near enough
desks for people is tough work. Especially when you're planning
to go away for about 3 weeks and leave your desk unguarded for
that long. So I've decided to put on a notice to tell people
that I'm just going to be away for a bit and I'm not giving up my
desk. Hopefully that means I stil have a desk when I come back.

It's the last day I'm going to be in uni before I'm back from
Europe. Really though, it still hasn't really sink in. Especially
when we've planned this for so long, and now it just creeps up on
us. Not to mention that the tickets stuck at the moment and I can't
seem to be able to take it out of my drawers. I'm sure I can solve
that problem before I'm off though... I hope.

Been kinda socialised these days. Since everyone said "We should
meet up before you're off!". So Pete and I are basically meeting
with different groups of friends every nights of the week. Don't
get me wrong: it's great! And I always like to catch up with people
and talk. I'm just a wee bit tired lately that's all. Good thing is
I'm taking tomorrow and Friday off uni, just to do any last minute
shopping before we're off, as well as pack. :P And I probably
should wash my car before I'm off too. *sigh*

You know I really should stress more about the conference... :P

5 days and counting down

James just informed me that the conference's programme is already
online, so I could've just looked at it and decide whether to take
the last day off and head to Paris early or not all along. Silly,
I know. Not to mention James isn't even in the conference. :P

5 more days to go and we're off. I'm a wee bit stressed out about
packing already. I keep thinking I'll over-pack. Chances are I'll
ended up packing about 5 pairs of assorted footwear "just in case".
And how I'm going to transport the poster to England? I'm not even
going to starting talking about clothes (or bags for that matter).
And socks! I need more socks!! ARGH!

Yes, I stress too much.

Other than this stress-o-rama mania, life's pretty good. I did
manage to injure myself just before the trip though. (I tripped
on my way to uni. :P) But it's nothing too bad. Still reading
papers like mad, and that's about it really.

Curse the linefeed!

Stupid email updates makes formatting all weird.

They've decided to convert the linefeed from emails
so that they can encode it in HTML. Little did we
know that if I update this via my uni email (web-
based and all coz I'm cheap) they add a linefeed
after every end of the line. Why? I don't quite
know. It's probably be something to do with the
fact that if they don't add that the display on the
browser would be all stuffed up. In which case you
got to wonder who wrote the program for the webmail.

On a happier note: it's less than one week to go til
my trip to England. I'm kinda excited. Although I have
to say I'm also a bit stressed. The hotel we wanted has
already been booked out (the one in Paris) so I'm hoping
our second choice will still be available today. Fingers
crossed it'd be fine. Eek~!

It's going to be a busy week this week. With packing,
last minute meeting with supervisor, meeting with friends
(since everyone wants to meet up before we're off) and
whatnots. (A LOT of whatnots). Lucky I AM getting a bit
excited about the trip, otherwise it's gonna be a LONG
week.

Sleepy News

Honestly, I don't think I can get used to this whole waking up in the morning thing. But that's okay. It's the weekend. I'm allowed to sleep til noon.

I had a strange bizarre dream last night, which made me worried about myself a little. You see I'm a fan of the TV programme Scrubs. In fact I think for the past 3 seasons I've only missed half an episode. And I'm starting to dream about it. And then I dreamt about telling my boyfriend that I dreamt about that, and then we decided that it's very likely that this might just be how the show might ended up in their next season. Gosh I hope not. I just like the sarcastic janitor and that's about it... If you are wondering, I was dreaming that Carla was having an affair with JD. Don't ask.

In other news: I think they've taken tax out of my research stipend! That made me grumpy all last night. It's from a government agency anyway so why does that matter? But then again I don't know for sure that it IS indeed my stipend that I see in my account. I'm just gonna make sure it is first and THEN I'll go complain.

Ah well, 8 days til my trip to England people! This countdown thing is getting exciting. :D

New Pens!!

I still can't believe I'm going to use a pen that's not waterproof. But it's nice, comfortable, AND it comes in a set with a fineliner, a rollerball, a mechanical pencil AND a highlighter. I just thought I'll indulge myself and buy that.

Still at uni at the moment. I'm going to have a half day today though. Just because I can. That and I'm catching a ride with my brother again and he's leaving at 12.

Ah well, back to reading. For some bizarre reason I'm actually enjoying the stuff I'm reading: it's on using neural networks with time-frequency distribution. Wonder if I can use that in my project... :P

The birth of a blog

I've finally decided that my primitive blog that I put on the free web space (courtesy of my ISP) is too time consuming. And with the easy archives that blogger has... why not. :P

I took today off uni. It's not like I have anything to do there anyway. Basically just sitting and reading. I think I can do that at home anyway. Plus I can't get a ride home from my brother today, more the reason to sleep in and work from home. :)

Only 10 days til my trip to England/Paris now. Yay me! Almost everything is set, besides the accommodation in Paris, that's about it. I've also decided I'm going to use my old poster for the psoter presentation, mainly because I can't be bothered to make a new one.

And have I mentioned I'm not a morning person? getting back to uni life is going to be bad...