Now that I am officially at uni often it has been a boring, fun, and slow start. My lab/office mates are awesome and it is particularly great that I have Kelly who is also doing the MRes program so we can go to things together. Not to mention she's just a blast in general.
We had multiple workshops to go to that were long and I'm not entirely positive were useful, but I tried to make the most of it. Although the one on project planning was longer than I felt it needed to be, I was excited to check out some of the project planning software they mentioned. I was sad that all of it costs money and so I will stick with my excel spreadsheets and calendar system. For those of you that struggle to get stuff done during the day though, I will recommend the Pomodoro technique.
Besides workshops Kelly and I spent some time working on a large yearly calendar for the lab so everyone can see when our workshops and assignment type stuff was due. It is ALWAYS worth spending the time to get yourself organised. I am glad we finished it and especially that the calendar was free from the bookshop.
Kelly was also really helpful as I edited my literature review on tiger vocalisations. There are two really awesome types of referencing software which are SUPER useful for creating citations and bibliographies. I was taught to use a free program called Zotero in the US, but at Macquarie they use Endnote which is not free but the university has a license for us to use it. They are pretty similar, and Kelly was telling me how to add in-text citations with Endnote and so I figured out how to do the same in Zotero. In the end I cleaned up my citations and bibliography! If you look up a lot of articles and things I highly recommend using one of these programs.
As for Matt, he has had some good and bad times recently. The good news was he got a side job painting a beautiful unit right next to the Manly Wharf. The bad news was that the woman owning the unit broke her leg about an hour after he met with the woman who owned it for the first time. Additionally, he may have received multiple tickets for running a red light (they have camera red light systems for some intersections and if you run a red light you will see a flash and later get a bill in your mailbox). The other good news was that Matt was able to finish that job in three days! The bad news was that he had to work 12 hour days to finish it and we didn't do anything for Valentine's day. Unfortunately, he also had a small accident with a parked car that he slid into due to the wet roads that damaged the front bumper and hood of our car. More good news is that he's all done and back to regular work hours (until that job's done) and we did get to have a nice dinner when he finished the job.
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| Manly Wharf view from the apartment |
Another major event was the beginning of a "Come Dine with Me" activity organised by our friends Erika and Mike Barnett. Basically each couple makes a fancy two course meal for the others along with an activity or conversation starter. We rotate each month until everyone has done their meal and we pick the top 3. This turned out to be really stressful because Matt and I went first and two of the girls are pregnant so I had to avoid soft cheeses and things for them, and one is also gluten intolerant. I wanted to do italian but I was stressing how to make my chicken cordon bleu, pasta, and cake roll gluten free. I had just figured out what to do when that couple dropped out. In the future I think I might try making more gluten free food so I can have those skills, but in the end I reverted back to the non-gluten free options. We had chicken cordon bleu, roasted garlic parmesan asparagus, salad, mixed steamed veggies, rolls with oil and vinegar to dip, shell pasta, and an amazing homemade garlic alfredo sauce. For dessert I made a sponge roll with homemade whip cream and candy bar bits. Sorry for the lack of pictures but you will just have to use your imagination! I think it turned out well although I was surprised the cheese wasn't melted in the chicken and I made way too much pasta - leftovers? Also, a wonderful perk was that everyone gets along so well that there was no need to plan a conversation activity since everyone had no problem contributing to various topics from tattoos, movies, books, documentaries, and church stuff. It was a fun night, but I must say I am glad my night is over and the next 4 months we can enjoy someone else's big meal!
And there's just a few more things I thought I should add.....
like the view from my run one Saturday,
Matt super happy playing a Lego game with Brock,
And the centipede Matt found one day that the cat REALLY wanted to eat,
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