Monday, October 13, 2014

Celebrating with General Conference

Last week I did my final edits before printing and turning in my master's thesis. My supervisor was originally going to get me her edits over the weekend, instead I got them Monday through Thursday. I was able to get all the revisions done, but there was no time for questions or seeing if my edits actually fixed things. I found out from another student that they were also waiting for last minute revisions from their supervisor. Trying to complete a big research project in 9-10 months is difficult!

When I had my lunch break from writing outside, Shade rested underneath me. 

After I finally made my last revision on Thursday I went and got it printed! It was so relieving to just have that done! I celebrated with lunch at Subway. 



The next day I turned it in and had lunch with some of the other MRes students at TGIF's to celebrate. It was a HUGE lunch, but a great way to end this milestone. 

Hayley and Nick enjoying their first TGIF's visit
You'd think that this means I'm done with my Master's, but unfortunately that is not the case. Now I wait for reviewers to go over it and it is likely I will have to make revisions in late November to get the Master's degree. In the meantime - this week I am creating a journal article version of the thesis so I can get it published. As much as I would like to just be done with it, my hope is that by publishing it someone won't have to go through all the frustration that I went through. With my research, anyone studying tiger vocalisations will have a baseline of what to expect and what to investigate. On top of that, I also need to clean up stuff at the lab, make sure all my files are in order, and create a guide so that anyone else could use or follow up with what I accomplished. 

My weekend was pretty good. Friday night (after my huge lunch) there was a baptism for an amazing Sri Lankan family! Dev is one of my young women and this was also her 14th birthday so unlike the typical baptism, it was practically a feast afterwords and many people even brought gifts for Dev. 


Dev and her mom
The highlight of the night wasn't all the food or decorations, but the spirit that was present! I did not know much about how they came to know The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but I'm glad they shared their story. They are a wonderful family and I'm happy to have them join our ward family. 

The rest of the weekend was focused on watching General Conference. I downloaded the HD video podcasts from iTunes in advance and so I could easily watch them and take notes on my Kindle. The Saturday morning session was awesome, but I got so tired through the afternoon I fell asleep. I decided later I am just going to have go over all the talks multiple times. I don't want to go into a lot of detail on talks, but what really stood out to me was how the Lord loves me as I am and to show my love for him I need to show love to others. Two things I need to remember and work on. It's so wonderful to have modern-day prophets and apostles to guide us! 

Sunday afternoon Matt and I spent time with our friend Dean and Crystal. The only problem was that I was extremely tired and Crystal wasn't feeling so great either. We left earlier than we had planned and I immediately crashed. A few hours later I got up, but felt I easily could have slept the whole night! I think all of my lack of sleep from the previous week finally caught up to me. 

The next day I had scheduled a massage in the city from a groupon. It was just what I needed and my body felt less tense, but my mind never stops thinking about things so it is really hard to fully relax. Matt planned to meet me in the city but as he was on his way my phone died! I found an Optus mobile shop and they let me plug my phone so I called Matt and waited there for him. We decided after that I need one of those portable power sticks. 

Part of Darling Quarter in Sydney
We had lunch in the shopping centre there and Matt hated it! He ordered a pizza at a kebab shop and the kebab meat has a distinct flavour that he did not like. I had a spinach and feta gozleme which he said tasted like seaweed. I liked it, but I still don't get how he thought my food tasted like seaweed.  Afterwards we met with a guy to look at some bikes we found on gumtree (AUS equivalent of craigslist). We will make that decision today, but hopefully we will have some bikes soon so we can explore all the surrounding parks! 

Matt and I also celebrated my thesis completion by going out to Max Brenner. I had a waffle with fruit and Matt had strawberry and cream crepes. He discovered that the crepes were good, but the chocolate was AMAZING. He licked all the chocolate off both our plates with his finger. We decided next time he should just get the chocolate shot. It was a great way to end a crazy long week, although I am definitely going to need to get back to working out!

Now it's back to more work!

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