My brain is in an underwater like state, all because of the postgraduate retreat...

Wow, looking back my last post was in October, and its now November. Time has flown! The scary thing is that its now only a bit over a month until christmas :)

Anyway, my basic car maintenance course is now over, so now that's something crossed off my 'to do list'. It was a bit of a let down actually, the last session. A lot of boring theory. I had actually missed the second last session, as I was writing a report for my 6 month confirmation. Overall, I'm happy with it, but I don't think I learned as much as I could have. I probably can't do all the maintenance we were taught e.g. how to do an oil change, but I know now how to change a tire, and know about some of the parts of the car a bit more. But there's a lot of stuff you can do yourself e.g. check brake fluid, coolant for the radiator that I will leave to a professional.

The other major thing was that I did my 6 month review. Finally! I was a nervous wreck the entire day, and decided to have a major panic attack before hand (Looking back, it was very embarrassing, unfortunately, you can't turn back time). It didn't help that I heard a lot of horror stories about students who had quit their PhD's because they had failed their confirmations. I know, I know, it wasn't the official thing, but it was the first time I had presented my project to people in my department. I had no idea what to expect! But it went ok, I got some feedback about it and some advice. I was soooo relieved after it was over! At the very least I feel better about my OFFICIAL one, the 12 month confirmation. But it does mean I have to do some work before then (the end of January)....

Its also been birthday season. There have been quite a few people who have had their birthdays at this time of the year. One that was a lot of fun was arranging a surprise birthday party for Roza. That was a bit difficult to arrange, as Jess, Brett and I had to organise it through email and SMS (epecially on the day). We couldn't talk about it in the lab as Roza was also usually around. As well as that, it was the same time Brett was trying to write his thesis and I was preparing for my 6 month review. On the day, there was the slight hiccup when I had to come up with an explanation to go to Jess place in coburg, as the original story we had come up with was that we were going to see a movie in the city. I then had to explain why we were bypassing Coburg. But the story of having cousins seemed to work ok. That moment, when she opened the door and saw Jess and Brett there was classic. And the first thing she said was that we're all liars *lol*.

I also got the chance to go to Ballarat! I know, I know, its Ballarat, but I've only been there for two days for the postgrad retreat last year. This time, I was going there to work at the Ballarat show, which is like the Royal Melbourne Show, cept its in Ballarat (duh) and on a smaller scale. I was going there to help out with a stall set up by the GTIS (Gene Technology Information Service) to basically promote awareness about science (well, biotechnology) to the general public. It was actually much harder than I thought, because you have no idea what questions about science you'll be asked or who your audience will be. You could be talking to an elderly person or a six year old kid. Its very hard to explain the purpose of DNA to a six year old! Plus the fact the questions you could be asked can be totally outside your field of science. Questions ranged from GM foods, stem cell research, gene transfer and just what is a scientist? One person was amazed he was actually talking to someone who did science, and that we didn't just stay in our labs all day! We were also doing science experiments to try and get kids interested in science. It was just a simple experiment of extracting DNA from strawberries but the expressions on these kids faces when they realised that the white stuff that looked a lot like fairy floss was inside them as well, well I can't think of a word to describe it. A lot of them wanted to take it home! It reminded me of one of the first science experiments I did with a packet of smarties, and the realisation that you've discovered something, learnt something new. One of the classic moments with those experiments was that one of the kids thought the strawberry mix in the tube was blood and fainted. Although there was a lot of time spent sitting around, it was a lot of fun.

The trip to Ballarat was good in other ways as well. I now know that map reading and navigating are not one of my talents, and that I'll have to kiss my chancees of ever succeeding on The Amazing Race good bye. I got lost both going to and from Ballarat! To get there, I took the wrong turn off as I was trying to get to the Tullamarine Fwy, and as a consequence, I spent an hour driving around trying to find the right turn off. At one point I was even driving backwards towards Melbourne! But once there, it was ok, there were enough signs to tell me where to go, plus the fuzzy memory of my journey to Daylesford came back to me. On the way back, I was planning to get back to Melbourne using the same route I used to get to Ballarat. However, for some bizzare reason, I couldn't find the Western Ring Road, and ended up driving on the West Gate Bridge and approached the city from the West. It lead me back to the city, but not the way I expected. I also freaked out when I was trying to find the right turn off to get to the city...stopping in the middle of the freeeway is definetely not a good thing :P

Seeing the Ballarat show made me realise how different it is to Melbourne. The main difference that became apparent to me was the kind of people that were in Ballarat. Melbourne is definately more multicultural; you'll find more different nationalities in Melbourne than you would in Ballarat. I guess that difference would be even more pronounced if you went to a smaller country town further away from Melbourne. It did seem like a different world than I'm used to in Melbourne. Plus its much quieter, and much slower, in the sense people are friendly and more willing to have a chat to you.

Also walking around the show, I realised that I never had fully appreciated the Royal Melbourne Show. I always seem to go straight to the rides and showbags. In Ballarat, I spent time looking at the 'other stuff' - the animal nursery (did you know that guinea pigs don't smell because they don't have musk glands, whereas goats do?), cattle, sheep, needlework, cooking (didn't know there were so many categories) and the wood chopping. It was quite interesting actually, and kind of depressing too, as a ten year old can cook way better than I can - one had made this really nice chocolate cake.

The other thing about the show was that one day was spent working with Scott. Before, I had only known in a social sense ie. someone you said hi to if you saw each other in the corridor (we're in the same department) but after spending a day working with him in Ballarat, I don't him that well still, but my opinion of him has changed :)