Lhiannee's Blog

Greetings from Chicago!

2006-05-26T11:58:00.001-10:00

I have been in Chicago these past few days and I have been surprised to find that it is a great city! I came to Chicago to give a talk at the university but when I told people I was coming here, the reaction wasn't good - ranging from "don't go walking by yourself" to "why would you go there?". I always noticed how many young people there were in Chicago airport compared to other airport hubs like Denver or LAX, and there are an awful lot of young people in Chicago everywhere. Chicago people tell me that the city and area around the university used to have a lot of crime, but that these areas have been cleaned up a lot in the last few years. The area around the university seems like a nice old suburb with lots of trees and old houses and churches. Plenty of people walking around by themselves. The city is great with lots of things to do and my friends here have been taking me around to all sorts of good restaurants, shops, to see a band, and to the theatre. The city is very pretty looking (especially at night) and it is on the edge of one of the great lakes. It is a really huge lake so it actually looks like a strangely calm ocean. They even import sand so it has a long beach and people sun-bake in the summer! There are lots of bike-paths and parks around the city for miles and miles. A lot of people here go sailing on the weekends. The people are very friendly, and strangers smile and make conversation - unusual for a big bustling city. I will definitely be coming back to Chicago soon!

Long Time No Post

2006-05-21T02:20:00.000-10:00

Greetings from Connecticutt! I am travelling at the moment - have just been in Boston and Ohio. Boston was having heavy rains and some towns were flooding. Fortunately the storm has passed and the weather is now beautiful and I am in Connecticutt visiting a friend of mine. She is getting married later in the year and lots of plans for the wedding are coming together! We went for a walk in one of the many parks near New Haven and it was very beautiful. The trees seem a lot more delicate than the ones in Hawaii, and they have a very different smell (I think it smells like fresh bread). On Monday I'll be flying to Chicago and thenback to Hawaii on Saturday :-)

Great new products on-line today!

2006-04-01T09:43:00.000-10:00

Thinkgeek.com which has *great* T-shirts like "Chicks dig Unix", has a range of new products including the desktop USB tanning system, "Grow Your Own 1up Mushroom Kit", the infamous "wireless extension cords", and a caffeine inhaler: just like an asthma inhaler, only caffeine.

April Fool's Day Fun

2006-04-01T08:15:00.000-10:00

Lots of websites & Newspapers having fun on April Fool's Day!

Britain's "Sun" newspaper announces the sighting of a penguin walking along the Thames. It walked around the Tate Gallery before returning to the Thames. Penguin expert says the penguin is a type of penguin called a "Jackass".

The U's Daily Register announced that China Buys Google. This story is written by the well-known reporter Mu Shu Porked, and also reveals that China has bought NASA's Ames research center. The news article is great complete with a little photoshop tutorial on "How We Didn't Break the News".

My favorite one which unforunately isn't on-line is by the UK's daily express. The government has discovered that biscuits (cookies) make great Tarmac. The crushed biscuits are steamrollered into tarmac, and the best biscuits are gingernut.

Google has announced a new dating service called Google Romance. You post your dating information and they will send you on a "contextual" date along with a bunch of ads they think are relevant. The tour is hilarious. User A uploads her profile, while User B uploads several wildly divergent profiles because he is a sleaze. Google says: "those who generally favor the “throw enough stuff at the wall” approach to online dating might find it useful to employ our Batch Profile Uploading option."

Homestarrunner is upside down!

Uncyclopedia has been taken over by Apple. It now has a nice Apple layout.

Slashdot (news for nerds) has changed its format, and is now pretty in pink with "OMG!! ponies!!!" theme. Great titles for posts are "OMG!!! wireless extension cords!!! LOL!!!", there is an announcement that we are closer to genetically breeding dragons and unicorns, George Lucas is issuing adult versions of Star Wars, "Monkeys Use Robots To Fling Poo!!! Gross!!! :) :)", Cutest Website Ever Discovered!!!" which really is cute. Check out the cuteness:

More Flooding!

2006-03-31T22:52:00.000-10:00

Its been raining almost constantly! so we haven't been doing very much outdoors things. Today Honolulu had a record-breaking amount of rain and the river up the street from my work had a flash flood. Within about 20 minutes the river flooded and water swept up the street. In another 20 minutes all the water drained away and everything looked back to normal, except for cars that no longer would start. Here are some pictures during the flood:

This is looking up the street from my work:

another one looking up the street:

This is the car park about 200 metres up the street:

Fortunately, I had parked on higher ground. We haven't been getting as much rain at our house and our back yard isn't so pond-like anymore.

Flooding over!

2006-03-20T18:27:00.000-10:00

Thanks for your comments Peter & Jasmine!
Luckily, the rain eased up before anything serious happened. It kept raining all day but it eased enough to let the ground drain and although our backyard is still sloshy, it is much less like a pond and more like a marsh! Lots and lots of frogs and toads there at night. Jasmine: Emma is fine - she was a bit grumpy about not being able to go outside for so long but she's a happy little camper today. She has a strange new habit of appearing while we get dressed every morning. She looks wide-eyed at our shoulders while we're putting clothes on and as soon as the last item of clothing is on, she launches herself from the ground or bed onto our left shoulder (must be the left shoulder) where she then leans left and right so that we know which way she wants us to go. She then peers at everything and sometimes uses our shoulder as a launching pad to get somewhere higher. Its pretty wierd that she only does this as soon as we get dressed.

Flooding!

2006-03-19T09:54:00.000-10:00

Not much has been happening recently except a LOT of rain. Today the storm that caused a dam to break in Kauai has hit Oahu and we have a flash flood warning for our area. Our backyard has turned into a lake and there is now a river running through it out onto the road. The water around our house still has a few inches to go before it reaches the wood so hopefully the rain will subside and the river will keep the water moving away from the house.

David Hasselhof in the cheesiest music video ever!

2006-02-09T13:53:00.000-10:00

If you love cheesiness you must see this David Hasselhoff music video "Hooked on a Feeling"!

Wow. Just Wow.

Pics from Robyn's wedding!

2006-02-04T17:08:00.000-10:00

Here are some pictures from Robyn's wedding of people looking outrageously happy!

The happy couple!

Robyn looking most outrageously happy!

Michele looking outrageously happy...or just peacefully outrageous!

I can't not take photos of flowers, even wedding cake flowers:

And some flowers from Granny & Grandpa's garden:

In the news!

2006-02-01T08:29:00.000-10:00

I got back safely from Australia (I'll post some wedding pictures soon! there's a great one of Michele in there, as well as beautiful ones of Robyn and Daniel).

Work is busy! The university put out a press release about my award as soon as I got back. Click here for the press release. And the Honolulu Star Bulletin called to get some extra quotes for this story. And the American Astronomical Society put out their own release which got picked up by the Australian Astronomical Society for their email newsletter.

Reuben had cleaned the house and lit candles everywhere when I got back. It is great to be home again. And my laptop arrived back with a new screen! so all is well in Hawaiiville.

Got an award!

2006-01-19T08:40:00.000-10:00

I haven't posted for a while because its been hectic here! we had lots of visitors and I just got an award for my astronomy work so now the University is preparing for a press release about my award. I had no idea how much work went behind a press release! Its been fun though. Our two friends Peter and Jasmine are arriving today.\ :) O haven't seen them for over a year - maybe two? They're getting married here on Tuesday! Then I'm off on a short 4 day(!) visit to Australia for Robyn's wedding next Saturday! I managed to get the last frequent flier ticket available so its been a lucky couple of weeks. Reuben will stay in Hawaii with Emma.

My laptop has been shipped back to Apple because of a screen problem so I haven't been able to put up some new photos yet. Hopefully on the weekend I can put some up. I do all my work on my laptop so I feel kind of lost without it...sad, huh?!

Happy New Year!!!

2006-01-01T11:27:00.000-10:00

For New Year's Eve R did a gig with the band Second Hand Sin. There were tons of people and it was great fun. R has a fan club! to his chagrin, its an all-male fan club! Hehehe. R got lots of free cocktail vouchers so we drank cosmopolitans....Mmmmm. Today we're going to have a BBQ and set off fireworks. Here are some pictures from the gig (a bit blurry because I didn't bring a tripod).

Temple Valley Pictures

2005-12-28T17:44:00.000-10:00

Yesterday we went to the Byodo-In temple. It is a buddhist temple that was built to celebrate the Japanese settlements in Hawaii. It is only a 5 minute drive from our house but we hadn't been there...I think mainly because we went to Japan in May and we were all templed-out for a while. The Byodo-In is right in front of the Koolau mountains in a valley. There is a huge bell-shaped gong that people can ring by swinging a big pole. The gong resonates for a few minutes with a very deep sound.

Here is a picture of the Byodo-In temple:

There were some small waterfalls:

The temple is surrounded by streams containing lots of huge colorful carp:

Merry (belated) Christmas & Happy New Year!

2005-12-27T17:47:00.000-10:00

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!!! I hope you had a great Christmas day.

On Christmas day, we made a huge feast. We did a BBQ turkey - it turned out really well. Reuben's mother Gwen is visiting us and she made lots of veggie dishes and some delicious cranberry relish. I made a buche de noel and gingerbread and other goodies. I discovered a great new recipe (for Australians only): coconut cherry ripe macaroons. Gwen brought us a whole bunch of cherry ripes (I can't get enough of them and there's nothing like it here) so to meake them last longer, I use them in cooking. Last time, I made cherry-ripe ice-cream, but by far the best cherry ripe recipe so far is coconut cherry ripe macaroons. Get any old coconut macaroon recipe and add two chopped up cherry ripes. The chocolate melts when cooking and the cherry gives the macaroons a delicious cherry ripe flavor (funny that). Mmmmmm...delicious.

We had two friends over for the Christmas feast and we ate outside. When it got dark, we lit our oil lanterns and fairy lights. We had bought a badminton set a few months ago and forgotten to put it up so we got it out and its great fun! We're seriously thinking about getting some glow-in-the-dark paint so we can play badminton at night.

Today we went to see the Byodo-In Temple in the valley of the temples near our house. Pictures coming soon...In the afternoon we went to the beach and did some boogie-boarding. Gwen caught some waves too.

pictures!

2005-12-19T08:54:00.000-10:00

Strange flower at the Hoomulia Botanical Gardens near our house.

This flower is called lobster claw I think.

Some of the rainforest in the botanical gardens.

A different part of the botanical gardens. There is a lake surrounded by palm (and other) trees, with mountains in the background.

This is the beach around the diamond head area. The sand isn't as nice as Kailua beach but this one has a nice view of Diamond Head. We sat and read here for a bit on Reuben's birthday before going to dinner.

Synchronised Christmas lights

2005-12-18T21:23:00.000-10:00

Many Americans go crazy with Christmas lights. This is a Good Thing because there are not enough fairy lights in the world. This man (an electrical engineer) synchronised his Christmas lights to music by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. He broadcasts the music on a short-range FM radio station so that people driving by can hear the music and it doesn't disturb the neighbours!

Click here to see the synchronised Christmas lights

This guy must have a lot of spare time!

Time flies!!

2005-12-18T15:14:00.000-10:00

Whew its been 10 days already since my last post! We've been busy Christmas shopping and it has been gorgeous weather up til today, so we've been spending a lot of time outside. Yesterday we went to Kailua Beach. It was lovely but the water was cold. We also went to the botantical gardens to scope out good picnic, camping, and wedding sites. Our friends Peter & Jasmine are probably coming here to get married in January so we're going to find the most beautiful parts of the island for them to see. The botanical gardens were fantastic and the light was really nice in the morning. I'll post some photos later. There are a lot of unusual flowers out at the moment.

We're just putting up our Christmas decorations. It doesn't feel right to have a Christmas tree in Hawaii where its so tropical so I got an enormous poinsettia plant for the presents to go under. Its about a metre high and looks much more at home in our tropical surroundings than a pine tree! Strangely, people do get pine trees - they're incredibly expensive because they are shipped over from the mainland!

Lots of people have great Christmas lights up and I found a street near my gym where every house has the most outrageous number of Christmas lights. Its excellent! I'll have to dig out my tripod and take some photos.

Fake Astronauts Reality Show

2005-12-07T16:03:00.000-10:00

Here's a reality tv show right up my alley:

Fake Astronauts BBC Reality TV

They're going to take a bunch of gullible (or as they say "suggestible") people and try to make them think that they are astronauts. They're going to use an abandoned UK base and make the participants think the base is actually Russia's Space Tourism Agency. Isn't there a temperature difference between UK and Russia? Anyway, they're going to use the shuttle from the movie Space Cowboys with a screen that give them a view of earth as they 'take off'. The lack of weightlessness is goign to be explained by telling them that they will be going to "Near Space", not "Deep Space". Hehehehehe. Are people that gullible?

Pictures!

2005-12-03T12:24:00.000-10:00

Here is a lovely green gecko that I found walking on our screen door this morning. Luckily for the gecko, Emma did not spot it.

A picture of one of the flowers in our garden at the moment:

Emma enjoying some sunshine (its been raining a lot!).

R wanted me to add this one. I made him dinner last night and did some cheesy (or more tomatoey) hearts on the meat. R arranged it all nicely on a tray and took a picture while I was asleep.

Woot Woot

2005-12-02T10:27:00.000-10:00

Woot Woot! the fever is gone! what a difference three degrees makes! I feel almost normal again...but sounding very husky. Not so much Tina Turner Huskiness. More like a man. I better not wear lots of makeup and big hair or people will think I'm a drag queen! Such a shame because I was so hoping to go out like this today:

Hehehe.

Could not fry an egg on my forehead

2005-12-01T18:10:00.000-10:00

Fun Fever Facts!

With this fever, I feel like I could fry an egg on my forehead. It was tempting to try it out, but it would be a waste of an egg so I asked google. Apparently eggs need to be heated to 144 -158 degrees F before they are considered cooked. Google says that brains start melting at 107 degrees so my brain would melt before I could cook an egg on my forehead! I'm a few degrees from brain melt so my brain is safe :)

At Home sick today

2005-12-01T15:37:00.000-10:00

I am at home sick today. Got a fever, sore throat, etc. Not much fun.

Electronic cyber chicken hugging jackets

2005-11-30T22:55:00.000-10:00

Some singapore professors decide one day that chickens don't get enough hugging (or perhaps just vibrations) from their travelling owners (as you do) and so they do what any decent human being would do: they create little chicken jackets with electronics in them that simulate being hugged when someone on the other end of an internet connection 'hugs' them. This is for real. Well, as real as any news is...its on the Australian ABC news - and I looked up the professor's name (Adrian Cheok, pronounced 'chook' I'm sure :) and he really is a professor in this sort of cyber electronics in Singapore.

Electronic Cyber Chicken Hugger Jackets

So I have a few questions that the article didn't really address: 1. Do most people in Singapore have chickens for pets? do they make better pets than cats and dogs? 2. How do we know that chickens need more hugs? 3. do chickens like wearing jackets? 4. Do they like being hugged by a jacket while they sit at the computer surfing the internet?

Kind of cute but kind of creepy!

Not much happening here!

2005-11-30T22:51:00.000-10:00

Well, I haven't blogged for a couple of weeks, but not a lot is happening here! Its been raining most of the time and I've been working mostly. On the weekend R and I saw the latest Harry Potter movie. Its very good - not as beautifully shot as the previous movie - but still definitely worth seeing. R is busy too - lots of recording and classwork for him. I've been doing a lot of yoga and reading cheesy mystery novels when I'm not working. Just relaxing :)

Crazy Japanese Game Show!

2005-11-12T11:34:00.000-10:00

The Japanese think up the wierdest game shows!

Iguana vs. Japanese girls with meat heads
Iguana 1, meathead girls 0

Greetings from the Big Island!

2005-11-07T00:14:00.000-10:00

I am observing a Keck on the Big Island tonight. We had some instrument problems but luckily it all seems to be working now and the weather is great. I'm very excited about the data that is coming in - it looks beautiful!

Reuben came over too. We were going to visit a nice beach today and see turtles but we both have a flu at the moment and we were completely zonked out :(

Hummingbird is actually a moth!

2005-11-01T14:26:00.000-10:00

I just found out that the 'hummingbird' in our garden is actually a moth called the "Hummingbird moth"! It hovers around flowers like a hummingbird and it has a long nose that it sticks into flowers.
There have been sightings of it in the botanical gardens and people keep asking whether they are hummingbirds. Could have fooled me!

Heh, and that reminds me...Emma brought in a huge moth the other day - it looked pretty similar to the "hummingbird" moth. I swooped it outside and shut the screen door so that Emma couldn't bring anything else it. She must have found something because I heard a big rustling in the garden and suddenly - bam! Emma flies headfirst into the screen door! she's ok - she had her pride hurt and had to lick her nose a bit. It was kindof funny though.

Hummingbird in our garden

2005-10-29T15:40:00.000-10:00

This is a picture of the hummingbird that we saw in our garden. The photo is a bit blurry because its using the digital zoom, taken from about 2 meters away. Those purple flowers are about two centimeters long so the hummingbird is only 3 centimeters long! it has a very long hair-thin beak that it was dipping into all the flowers.

Internet Down!

2005-10-25T12:55:00.000-10:00

If you're as dependent on the internet as we are, you'll love this video of what happens when the internet goes down. Kind of quirky:

Internet is down

SOO Busy!

2005-10-25T07:48:00.000-10:00

Just a quick blog - I'm swamped with work this week. To get time on telescopes, people have to put in proposals (~5 pages each) on what they want to do, why it is exciting, and why we should give them time. This year I am on the committee for U.Hawaii that decides who gets the time. The meeting is this week, and I've had to read a crazy number of proposals so not much time for anything else!! I had to do the same thing for the Hubble Space Telescope in April so I'm getting a lot of experience at this. Its a lot of work but its interesting to see what people are doing.

We had an enormous storm last night complete with thunder & lightning. The houses here are made of wood and are very thin. Not like the good ol' double brick houses in Australia. So everytime we have huge winds and rain I worry that the house will fall down. Its make of sticks afterall. Reuben was at the studio late and I was worried about him driving home but luckily he made it after the worst part of the storm was over.

On the weekend, we watched some of the new Dr Who. Its out in the UK and the new Dr Who is really crazy! (even more crazy than the old Dr Whos). Its also not very realistic. Hehehehe.

I was gardening on Sunday at dusk and I saw what looked like a big and wierd-looking bee in the garden, but it was actually a hummingbird! so tiny!!! it was loving the huge amount of purple flowers that I have in some pots. I took some pictures and I'll post them when things settle down!

Hike on the Old Pali Road

2005-10-16T21:31:00.000-10:00

This weekend we went for a hike on the old Pali Road. The old Pali Road used to be the narrow highway that connected our side of the island (the Windward side) to Honolulu. This highway winds around the mountains and is now all overgrown with plants. There is still a little path on the road that people can walk on and we hadn't done it yet (its about 10 minutes from our house!) and it wasn't too hot so we spent a couple of hours on the trail. The view was gorgeous - you can see the Koolau mountains on the left and the town of Kaneohe between the mountains and the bay. We discovered lots of ripe guava growing on trees all down the old Pali Road. We filled my hat with them and we're going to make them into juice. Yum! There were also a lot of yellow ginger plants - they have flowers that smell *really* good. Here are some pictures.

The Koolau Mountains:

Kaneohe town and Kaneohe Bay:

Ginger flowers:

New Car!

2005-10-15T14:05:00.000-10:00

I just got a new (for me) car!!! here is a picture of it:

Hopefully it won't be a money guzzler like our car that just died. This car is still under warranty and the previous owner took good car of it.

And here is an ultra-close up picture of Emma:

Got a new car...almost!

2005-10-15T08:05:00.000-10:00

We've almost got a new car! we found a 2004 Toyota Echo coupe in excellent condition at the Toyota dealer. There were a few there so we picked the one with the least miles and the best-kept paintwork and interior. The car in the best condition is a pale brown color - not my favorite color but its best to go with condition because hopefully it means that the previous owner looked after it.
We're just waiting on the finance to find us a low interest rate - hopefully it will be done today!!

Everything is breaking!

2005-10-11T21:20:00.000-10:00

Everything around us is breaking! Our Nissan Maxima has completely died - we're going to sell it for parts. It was a very old car (1988) but I've had cars 20 years old that didn't die in such a spectacular fashion! Our Suzuki's sensor that tells the engine how much oxygen is in the petrol is broken. Reuben's computer is on its very last legs - it keeps crashing all the time. My one-year old Apple laptop has been having screen problems and will need to go back to Apple for repair. Reuben's belt broke, and my Unix workstation crashed. That just leaves the dishwasher, our cell phones, and the TV! Must be Gremlins....

Reuben and I have only one car at the moment so we're both dead tired because we're trying to keep both of our schedules going. We get up at 8 so that I can get to work by 10. Reuben then bludges for a few hours, takes the car into Uni for his class, and then goes to the studio for recording and band rehearsals. He's there until 1am at which time he comes back to my work, picks me up and we're home and maybe in bed by 2am. Phew! Its exhausting but I'm getting a lot of work done. I had many deadlines looming and with two 15-hour days they're all taken care of. The best bit is that I finally submitted a paper that I've been working on for a few months and got some painfully tedious designs done for metal masks that will be machined for my galaxy observing in a month's time. Such a relief to get all of that out of the way!

I can't take much more of the long days and neither can Reuben so we'll have to buy another car. We don't want another car that will break down within a year or two after we buy it -- Hawaii isn't real good for cars what with the rust, mountainous driving, and flooding. So I'm going to try to get a loan so that we can get a car that is 1-2 years old so that we save a few thousand on the new price and get a car that is still under warranty. I'm thinking that aToyota ECHO would be good. Its been given consistently good reviews everywhere that I've looked (epinions, carmax, consumer reports) and there are quite a few available here so it will be easy to get parts if anything breaks (touch wood!). Hopefully we'll get a loan approved and we can get a car soon.

Tackiest Music Video Ever!

2005-10-05T07:39:00.000-10:00

This has got to be seen to be believed. It must be the tackiest music video ever.

Gem Sweater Video

Wow. Just Wow.

But wait, there's more for fans of tackiness: Leslie Hall's Website

Back in Hawaii! WooHoo!

2005-09-30T13:55:00.000-10:00

It is so nice to be back home again! When I got home, Reuben had cleaned the house and left vases of flowers in each room :) :) So I took photos of them.

Reuben has had streaks put in his hair and he just dyed them a dark red. It looks very rock star. I have to get some photos of him to put up.

It is rainy season now and it is bucketing down today. Makes it nice and cool in our house and a nice sound on the roof to sleep to. Emma has been very cuddly since I got back - sometimes she ignores me for a day or two but this time she's very friendly. The rain might have something to do with it!

The jet-lag is making me wake up very early so I'm going to try to make the most of it and get up early to do some yoga in the mornings. I'm usually a morning person who tries to be an evening person but I feel much better during the day if I get up early when I first wake up.

This coming week is going to be very busy with deadlines and talks. Reuben is pretty busy this week too. Next week we might both take a couple of days off and have a long weekend together. That would be nice :)

Greetings from Boston!

2005-09-27T11:15:00.000-10:00

I'm visiting Boston for a week! I was asked to give a seminar at MIT about my recent work. I just finished the talk half an hour ago. Phew! There were a lot of questions and some obtuse ones (one was prefaced with "this is an obtuse question but...")! but I'm told its good that they asked lots of questions. Tonight the MIT seminar organiser is taking me out to dinner at an Afghan restaurant and a couple of my old friends from Boston are coming. Tomorrow I'm going out to dinner with the MIT women in physics group. Then its back to Hawaii on Thursday. I'm really looking forward to being home and to have finished travelling for the year. This year has been a bit too much travel for work (five countries in four months, not including travel within the US) and I've been momentarily forgetting what country I'm in when I am tired. I have to look around and remember where I am, what language people are speaking and what side of the road I am meant to be driving on!

The weather in Boston has been beautiful. Clear blue skies and I really like the dry air. The leaves haven't started changing color yet so everything is very green.
On the weekend I went to New Haven in Connecticutt to visit my friend Michelle who I knew from Australia. She has just moved in with her boyfriend who is very nice and easygoing. It was great to see Michelle again :)

Boogie-boarding, Party!, & Emma-puss

2005-09-15T07:47:00.000-10:00

This past week my friend Holley was visiting. She just moved to LA and was sounding very stressed so I invited her to visit us in Hawaii. She's in a wheelchair which made some things (like going to the beach) very difficult. But we managed to get her chair to the beach (with a lot of muscle work from Reuben). Here is a picture of Kailua beach last Saturday. Kailua is the closest beach to our house and it is not usually very crowded. It is great for long walks.

The waves were good so we did a bit of boogie-boarding. That little black dot is Reuben cruising in on a wave!

Holley gave us a great fondue book which came in very useful for our cheese & wine party that we had on Saturday. About 30 people came - it was mostly people from my work (and their partners). There was a good mix there, from faculty, to computer science, librarians, administrators, postdocs and students. What I really like about where I work is that there is more mixing between the different groups of people than in most other places I've worked at. The other good thing is that most people here have a life outside work so they can talk about other things at parties and spouses don't have to feel left out. Also makes for a more relaxed atmosphere at work. Everyone brought a bottle of wine and some cheese, so it wasn't too much work to prepare. We have a good setup for parties with a very big carport and lots of outside power outlets for fairy lights and music. Lots of people came and later in the evening there was dancing around our "double disco balls of light" - two cheesy (no pun intended!) colored balls which spin around and send colored circles around the room, or in this case into the sky. We had yummy chocolate fondue from Holley's book which disappeared really fast! People were still talking about the fondue yesterday. Thanks for that book Holley!

This weekend I think we'll head to the beach if the weather is nice or maybe go on a hike and get some fruit (mmmm...mangoes). Reuben and I haven't had much time together for the past couple of weeks so we're missing each other!

Reuben has been doing lots of recording stuff for other bands at a studio which is great experience and great for contacts in the music industry.

Emma-puss is doing well. She seems to have found another cat's food in her wanderings. She's getting very solid and she comes home smelling like cat food. The other sure sign is that when we give her food (and we've tried many, many kinds now) she sniffs it and then walks over to the door to go outside as if there's a better option out there. Now she's sitting next to me huffing (she makes a very human-like loud huff sound) because the door isn't open.

Good news article on New Orleans

2005-09-06T21:35:00.000-10:00

Here is an excellent news article about Bush's response to the New Orleans crisis, in terms of his ideology.

The one major thing I noticed from all of the broadcasts about the evacutation is that it was pretty much all African American people who were in the stadium, left on the streets, etc. What happened to the white people living in New Orleans? everyone in New Orleans was told to leave before the hurricane hit. So all the white people got in their cars and drove off, leaving the people too poor to get out - the African Americans. No effort was made to get those people out before the hurricane. Some serious law suits are going to be brought against the government over this...though with almost all conservative judges in the supreme court I guess there's no worry for the Bush administration.

New Orleans

2005-09-01T19:34:00.000-10:00

What's happening in New Orleans is pretty appalling. As many of the people in the following news article say, the US government can get troops to Iraq but they can't get helicopters and buses to get people out of New Orleans or to give them food and water. These poor people have lost everything and then been without food and water for 3-4 days while people around them are dying, particularly the old and babies. How many helicopters are around in nearby states? Where are the airforce helicopters (in Iraq?)? Why couldn't the government drop food packets and water in a convoy of helicopters?

The situation sounds more and more like Lord of the Flies with the rapes, assaults and people roaming around putting guns in people's faces and shooting police officers.

Check out this
news article about the current situation in New Orleans

So horrible.

People are looting stores. My office-mate asked me today whether I would go and loot an Apple powerbook if I was in the flood and the Apple store was open and free-for-all. I'd be more worried about getting food and water and getting out of there to bother stealing a powerbook - as great as powerbooks are.

The magic 30 switch

2005-08-30T09:50:00.000-10:00

On Sunday I got up early and went to the gym for two hours. Going back this evening. I've gained 15 pounds in the last year and 10 of those were in the last couple of months! I'm happy with the extra weight but if it keeps on going on that way then I will be like this in no time:

And I will have to start wearing bright pink tight clothes...I could be exaggerating a little. I used to have no trouble with weight -- could eat anything I wanted and not gain anything. I even tried to gain weight after I'd been sick, using weight-builder's powder called "Build"! But Mum and Dad always said

"Wait until you're 30, then you'll start gaining weight".

I always poo-pooed when they said that, thinking I'd have a great metabolism forever. Well, I hate to say it but they were right. Turning 30 seems to have been the switch that turned my metabolism from ultra-fast to "don't eat that donut". Damn it all!

The most annoying thing is that you can't control where the weight goes. It doesn't go to the ankles which are still a bit bony or the hands which get cold and could do with extra fat. Nope, it all goes onto the hips and stomach. And if I happen to lose weight, does it come off the hips and stomach? No! it comes off elsewhere!

So its gym time for me. My goal is to get buff, like this:

and I won't be able to stop flexing my great big muscules or wearing pink bikinis. I'll enter a room and...flex. I may be exaggerating again. Anyway, going to the gym is fun and with my ipod on with VNV Nation going the time flies.

More photos of China!

2005-08-25T11:10:00.000-10:00

These kids were calling out "Hello" from their window to us. I love the smile on the girl's face. A lot of the kids were wearing these colorful hats.

The locals use Yaks for tourist rides. The Yaks are very docile and sure-footed. I felt sorry for the Yaks; they are used for milk, cheese, leather, tourist rides, and you can buy dried yak meat in a lot of stores.

The cat picture below is for Jasmine! Cats in China were a lot smaller than here (except our little cat Emma!). A lot of the businesses had their own cat. One of the tables in this cafe was dedicated to the cat rather than the customers. It had a little tent and cat food on it.

This is the Black Dragon Pool. It was a very serene and uncrowded garden.

Below is a typical street in Lijiang. It was hard to take street pictures without them being filled with Chinese tourists! Lijiang is the place in China where they go for holidays. I met a girl on the plane who had been to Lijiang a few weeks ago for the first time. She had just stayed for a weekend but she had met so many nice people that she decided to take her entire year's leave (only 10 days!) to spend in Lijiang with her new friends.

Lijiang, China

2005-08-23T21:33:00.000-10:00

Lijiang, China

I just got back from a visit to Lijiang in southeast China. The town is very beautiful, especially at night when it is lit up with huge red lanterns. It is full of bars, rickety cafes, and stores selling local crafts. The bars have bizarre beer names, like "Love & Roses" beer. Funnily enough, Love & Roses beer did taste like roses...in very very light beer. I can't imagine why the men didn't like it! Lijiang is the home of a matriarchial society called the Naxi minority. The inheritance goes down the female line, and the females make all of the decisions, including running the businesses and doing the housework. The men have it pretty easy, because they are 'not allowed' to do anything much except sit around, though some of them do take care of the kids. The wierdest part is that from the age of 14, the girls are allowed to take boys into their beds and all children born to a woman belong to her family and there is no such thing as 'father'. We went to an interesting performance by the Naxi orchestra. The women don't sing as much as scream in unison with piercingly high voices. I was shifting uncomfortably in my seat when a French woman sitting next to me said in a distraught voice "it tears at your soul". Yes, and the eardrums. The non-singing music was quite nice though.

The traditional clothes of the Naxi are blue but there are other, more colorful traditional clothes and some of the kids were dressed in them like the one to the left. The people were very warm. They appeared to just start talking to each other in the plane or in the street as if they had known each other forever. Something that does not happen so readly in Western society, even in Hawaii. The Chinese people at the conference said that this warmth is not so common in the large cities.

Lijiang was well worth the trip and I would love to go again, but oh the toilets! They had to be seen (and smelled) to be believed! I used to have toilet dreams when I was younger. I would be wandering around in my dream desperate to go and I've come across a toilet somewhere which was so dirty or had such a lack of privacy that I could never go in it. I'd wake up busting to go to the toilet and very glad that I hadn't managed to find a nice clean toilet in my dream. Well...my dreaming brain must have been streaming toilet images from China. Toilets that you could smell 50 meters away. Toilets without doors, toilets with doors or walls but about 1 meter high. My personal favourite was the one at the entrance to a sky lift to one of the mountains. Imagine a concrete rectangular gutter with a flush at one end which sends the water and everything in it down a thin canal to a drain. Imagine short parallel walls across the drain making, I suppose, cubicles. You squat over the drain and hope that no-one walks past you (no doors). As you squat, there is a flush and whatever the person did in the cubicle in front of you is now floating down just 20cm below you. MMMMMmmmm Nice. They were mostly very dirty squat toilets and there was never any toilet paper or soap. Even in nice restaurants or in the local airport the toilets were gross and you'd sometimes get a whiff of that smell while you were eating (Yum). What I don't understand is that the Chinese people don't smell, they wear beautiful clothes, they seem very clean. Everything else is quite modern. Yet they have to use toilets that are far worse than simply going behind a bush or out in the street (which many local kids preferred to do - do not wear flip-flops in Lijiang!). You knew when one of the women had just gone to the toilet because she got a certain look on her face. An "I can't believe I just went there" sort of look. Fortunately the hotel had decent, clean toilets. With seats. And toilet paper. And soap. Ok end of toilet rant.

The countryside was gorgeous and green. The conference organisers arrange for us to go on a tour of the nearby mountain area. Many native people live in tiny wooden cottages in the mountains and they make money from selling crafts and local food to tourists. The food included yak cheese and baked tiny tiny birds. Yak cheese tastes very sweet and not at all like goat cheese! I couldn't bring myself to eat the tiny tiny birds - they were about the size of my hand. As we walked past the women selling these things, the women would yell out "Hello! I LOVE you!" at us. Such warm people! hehe.

lost in translation

2005-08-23T20:02:00.000-10:00

Chinese-to-english translations!

Rinse Elucidation anyone? How about some Quick Instauration because of your stuffy headache chest? I forgot to get a picture of the hotel rules & regulations which states that if you break the regulations (no whorign, drug traffiking) they will send you to the pubic security office!