no shirt, no shoes, no...

...problem.

i enjoy that you basically can go to the grocery store in beach wear and/or no shoes.  not even sandals.  just lots o' barefooted folks.  seems to represent the aussie-beach culture-mindset well.

jacaranda trees

the jacaranda trees now seem to be in full bloom and i love them

they have awesome purple flowers and since that's not one familiar to me, i think they're great.

PHOTOS: http://blogographannex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/jacaranda.html

november thus far

04 november - sunday
did some work at the hub; tried to find econ variables; got very frustrated and not very far.

05 november - monday
graded a paper, went to the gym, did some work. not exciting.

06 november - tuesday
turned in my cloud+ftp paper, had a meeting, went to the gym

07 november - wednesday
turned in my esm paper, did work, went to the gym

08 november - thursday
did work, did some ra work, talked with Ashley about making sangria for thanksgiving and then we went to Subiaco in search of sangria.  basically got a glass of orange juice as 'sangria' for 8 dollars.  good thing that was the happy hour half price because 16 dollars for orange juice would have demanded some reaction.  walked around in search of somewhere else to go and ended up having some burritos and wine.  was an enjoyable evening and now i've been to subi.

09 november - friday
went to the mark liveris conference on campus in the am.  heard kenny and sarah present their research.  got some free lunch.  tried to do work in the afternoon but didn't really get anywhere.

10 november - saturday
went to the gym.  went to the grocery store and walked home.  watched tv.

11 november - sunday
went to fremantle with juliana.  took the train, had a nice time walking around freo.  the arts centre didn't have any art which was a bummer, but the market was fun and then we walked along the jetty and saw the oldest public structure in wa (a roundhouse - prison).  had a delicious sausage and donut like thing filled with chocolate from the market for lunch.  took the train back and got off in town to search for australia souvenirs - not a lot of luck but was a nice day.
PHOTOS: http://blogographannex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/freo.html

12 november - monday
had an RA meeting, did some work.  got really overwhelmed with the amount of research literature i had downloaded and had not read so i skipped the gym and spent the entire evening going through what i had downloaded to reshuffle the files to figure out what i should read.

13 november - tuesday
work at the hub, read lots of journal articles; went to the gym.

14 november - wednesday
work at the hub, read lots of journal articles; went to the gym.

15 november - thursday
actually had a good meeting in the morning, worked at the hub on my candidacy document.
went to the opening of the mexican film festival.  film was okay. it was in english more than spanish, but i did enjoy the dual language and mariachi music.  food was not as advertised and not that great. but it was still a nice social evening out with some of the hub folks.
PHOTOS: http://blogographannex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/mexican-film-fest.html

16 november - friday
worked at the hub on my candidacy document; went to the gym.

17 november - saturday
made cheesecake, did laundry, and vacuumed in the morning.
went to joel's for a bbq which entailed me taking the bus to juliana's, riding the train with juliana out to where vinny lives, and then going with vinny and fernanda by car to joel's.  that's a lot of transport.  luckily ashley was traveling south and able to drop me off after.
we ate a lot of delicious food and met max, joel's dog, and hung out.  and a lot of hub people showed so that was awesome.
PHOTOS: http://blogographannex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/bbq.html

18 november - sunday
skated 5ish miles around the neighborhood.
went to manna to cook food for the homeless.   possibly did more cleaning than cooking this time around. but still good.  had pizza afterward.

20 november - monday
worked on my candidacy document again. went to the gym.

21 november - tuesday
had a meeting.  didn't go quite as planned (had hoped to finalize the candidacy document at least to turn in) and have a bunch more work to do with the thing.
went to caversham wildlife park with ashley, beth (friend from TX), juliana, and joel.  so awesome.  hung out with kangaroos, got to pet a wombat and koala.  saw lots of animals i don't know anything about.  also we bbqed before hand in the park that surrounds the zoo like park.  it was a great afternoon.  not productive for the phd in the sense of writing, but probably healthy for my mind.  i'd like to spend more time with those animals.
PHOTOS: http://blogographannex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/caversham.html

22 november - today
more candidacy work.  so tired of it. ugh.

australian inventions

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20071644

november 1-3

01 november thursday
marked another paper, tried to look up a little data related question for another RA, and really spent most of the day being frustrated with the CLOUD+FTP paper.
actually, at about 3 i worked on obtaining information about hiring bikes on rottnest island and then sat around planning that and a trip to watch cricket with juliana and ashley.
then backed up all my files as joel's usb corrupted itself the day before, so i took that as a good reminder to back up my stuff.
chatted with brittany about thailand possibilities.
went to the gym.

02 november friday
realized i probably can't go to thailand with brittany, which was depressing.
spent the day (again) with the CLOUD+FTP paper, although managed to get the introductions in a lot better place (in part to joel's help as another set of eyes looking at it in the afternoon).
although most of the day was spent learning how to use EndNote and beginning to create an endnote library (after all of the students basically were shocked and appalled that i wasn't using it).
went to the gym.
watched some episodes of Black Books to finish that series.

03 november saturday - today
went to the gym.
was raining so decided against trying to go to the outdoor day of the dead thing and came into the hub.
spent more time with endnote and making the changes that i needed to with the cloud+ftp introductions.
lots of time with endnote. but that'll be good moving forward, and it was something i could do that i felt i could do and actually see the progress and do it while watching some eipisodes of tv.
oh and researched some potential trip ideas for within australia for brittany and me.

october

14 october sunday

15 october monday
went to the doctor because i had been feeling so tired.  had my blood drawn and it only took one try in each arm.

16 october tuesday
called emirates to confirm my passport details, and found out that i mis-interpreted my layover in dubai on the way home.  so i have a hotel room booked from emirates, so i guess i have some hours in dubai. that sounds interesting.

17 october wednesday
went and watched kate do her candidacy proposal.  her research is on sport and perfectionism.  seems interesting and she did a good job presenting.

18 october thursday
went to the gym after having not gone for a long time. glad to go back and feel a bit better.

19 october friday
went to the post office to get my police clearance.
had a meeting about the RA project; have been put in a 'manager' type role for the other two RAs.
marked a bunch of assignments.
went to the grocery store with bea and lydia.
went to the gym.

20 october saturday
went to the gym.
finished the marking (minus tallying the totals).
went with bea to a rooftop movie downtown.  was a really cool set up and lots of fun.
went to a few bars to see what northbridge has to offer.
took the train back and stayed at bea & juliana's
PHOTOS: http://blogographannex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/rooftop-cinema.html

21 october sunday
made french toast for breakfast.
went for a lovely walk around part of the river with bea.
had lunch with bea, joel, and juliana.
went with bea, joel, and juliana to join the manna crew to cook dinner for the homeless.
made another fritada - which turned out better than last time.
helped ice a whole bunch of oddly shaped cupcakes.
went out to dinner at a bar in vic park after with a group of people.

22 october monday
went to the gym.
worked on setting up a database for the RA project.

23 october tuesday
had a supervisory meeting that was only minutes long as they could then be reading drafts of my work.
went to hoopla with some students for coffee/cakes to celebrate kenny's birthday

24 october wednesday
did a bit  more marking.
went to the gym.
tried to read things in hopes i could find relevant 'control' related ideas/literature

25 october thursday
spent a lot of the day trying to go through the feedback i received on the two drafts of articles that adrian and lauren had looked at.  was very overwhelming in the case of lauren's and couldn't do much with adrian's since his suggestion would involve starting over with the analyses.  got very disheartened about my work.

26 october friday
joined a few students for 'disabilitea' which was a national event to raise awareness for trying to change some australian laws.  ate a bunch of scones.
tried to get more reading done, but really didn't get anywhere.
went to the gym.
went to the library to grab some movies and then went to juliana's.
went to the grocery store to make nachos and then watched some movies.

27 october saturday
went with bea, juliana, and joel to floreat beach for vin's birthday.
lots of brazilians (only joel and i did not speak portuguese)
ate delicious food.
swam a bit in the freezing cold water.
played a little tennis like raquet sport on the beach.
bea and i had to leave early to go home and get ready to then go to the bamnf film festival - which was one evening of a series of short films about various extreme sports.  we went with lydia; it was really cool.
stayed again at bea and juliana's since we had sunday plans as well.

28 october sunday
lounged around in the morning until the shopping trip for the stuff to make the brazilian dinner - which took us to multiple grocery stores.
made a dessert and watched some IT crowd episodes with joel.
then helped cook and hung out with a good crowd of the students and again had a delicious brazilian meal.
it was lots of fun.  a really great weekend.
PHOTOS: http://blogographannex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/brazilian-night.html

29 october monday
did phd reading and whatnot.
went to the gym.

30 october tuesday
had my supervisory meeting in which we discussed things from the feedback about the drafts.  decided how to go about the re-doing of the data for the one (CLOUD + FTP) and spoke about some of lauren's comments (ESM).
was a hard meeting and one that did not leave me inspired to keep working on them or any part of the phd.
very frustrating.
re-did a bunch of the analyses to start that process.
went to the gym.

31 october wednesday
halloween at the hub.
spent time in the afternoon playing with costumes and then augmenting my pirate costume (with a parrot). but i did finish going through the draft with the new analyses and new findings.
spoke with brittany.
and then celebrated halloween (see other post) which was really a lot of fun.
PHOTOS: http://blogographannex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/halloween.html

halloween

halloween was yesterday, making today the first day of november.
that seems odd.
perhaps because it doesn't seem like it should be november, and warm weather i guess may not indicate that time is moving towards the end of the year in the same way that it would be while not in the southern hemisphere.

halloween was a lot of fun yesterday.  was dressed as a pirate for half the day and had an enjoyable evening sharing how to carve pumpkins with australians who had never done so and eating candy and watching a stupid 'scary' film.

[PHOTOS: http://blogographannex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/halloween.html]

spoke with brittany for a minute yesterday and spent some time this morning looking up flights to join her on an asian adventure.  pretty exciting. want to really think about that because i need to figure it out, but i also really should try to accomplish some work.  just not sure my brain's up for hard thinking right now.

also in randomness of having youtube play me music to listen to yesterday, i discovered the bosstones are still playing shows.  missed their reunion, but that's pretty cool.