It's been a while...

More than a year, in fact. So, hi! 

While I left this blog,
I never did leave behind the silly.

I don't really have an explanation for why I left (though I never fully left, I've been keeping up with other people's blogs still, just not writing anything). I can explain why I'm back though: I turn 30 this month (aaargh!). It's a significant enough milestone that I've been reflecting on what my life has been like up to this point and what I've accomplished. Some aspects I really expected would be quite different (e.g., that I would have a full time job and at least one kid by now), but there's still also much I can be thankful for. 

Related to that, at the back of my mind all this time has been my 30 before 30 list and the rest of the items left to do. Obviously nothing bad will happen if I don't accomplish all the tasks (and it's probably impossible anyway with this little time left to do them all). 

I thought I'd revisit what's left to do on my list, and perhaps it will inspire me for what could be on my next list (40 before 40 perhaps??)...

Well it's about time...

Part of the letter I received today.

A new normal

To my surprise I realised today that it has been five weeks since I submitted my PhD thesis. That means that for five weeks I've been sitting around doing nothing much. Honestly. I've watched a lot of daytime TV in my pyjamas (mostly cooking shows for some reason), attempted some cooking experiments (with varying levels of success) and walked/run on my treadmill a bit. That's pretty much it. It is strange how quickly I've become accustomed to this lifestyle and yet how much time has passed with nothing much accomplished. 

This is me. [via]

I don't like it.

I do think I needed a long break after all the stress of the final couple of months of my PhD. My brain is starting to come out of the fog though and I want to start being active again... and yet at the same time sitting around and being a hermit just seems easier. It's a weird state to be in considering how ambitious I usually am. 

The other difficulty is the uncertainty. Not knowing where/when/if I'll get a job is very unsettling, as this is the first time since I was around 15 that I've had no idea what's next.

At least I have some more undergraduate teaching lined up as of next week. Nothing big or permanent, but something to tide me over until I get some sort of grown up job. Fortunately I haven't been booted from the PhD office yet (often they make people give up their desks once they've submitted) so I may also try to finish writing up my papers when I'm at uni. 

Err, so yeah. That's what's going on with me. What have you been up to? :)

WOOHOO!

Not Taken.

... well at the moment anyway. In other words, I arrived safely in London and made it to my hotel without incident. Well unless you count the fact that I didn't realise it's a bank holiday here today and therefore I had to pay public holiday rates for my taxi from the airport - ouch. I know I could have caught the train instead but I've previously had pretty bad experiences dragging around luggage in overly crowded stations - and that was with Husband there to do most of the heavy lifting!

When I arrived at my hotel my room wasn't ready yet, so I left my luggage there and wandered up the street to the British Museum to kill time. It was even better than I was expecting. The building is awesome and the exhibits are very detailed and interesting. My lack of sleep during the flights did start to hit me though about halfway through and I stopped paying attention and taking photos. I may have to go back another day.

I did take my own photos of the museum but the people taking photos for the British Museum website obviously did a much better job!

In other news, I have an update from my last post where I said I had no researchers to meet with. I am now meeting one tomorrow morning and another the next day, and I have another person I'm supposed to call soon too! Aargh. I'm really not great at talking to strangers anyway, but I'm sure this will be worse considering they're extremely smart and important and I'm trying to convince them they should hire me. So after getting back from the museum I had a nap and then went back to studying for my meetings (I hope there won't be a test!).

It also turns out a couple of my friends will be in London as well in the next few days, so things have worked out quite nicely in that regard. I also really like the suburb I'm staying in. So overall, if I pretend I don't have scary meetings coming up I can say so far so good and I'm looking forward to the rest of the week!

Booked.

Plane tickets and accommodation for my trip to the UK have been sorted! I'll be in London for about a week, and then heading up to Bangor in Wales for my neuroanatomy course. I'm supposed to be organising to meet with academics from different universities for while I'm in London, however it has been quite difficult to pin people down to agree to meet with me. It is a bit hard to get a job if I can't actually talk to anyone! I still have several weeks to go though so hopefully it will get sorted. If not I will have a fair bit of time on my hands in London. Unfortunately I will probably be a bit boring and use the time to work on writing my thesis. At least I've been to London twice before so I've seen many of the attractions already. Also from what the travel agent told me yesterday, even though the olympics will be over by the time I get there a lot of the visitors will still be around so the city will still be super packed. All the more reason to avoid the really popular places! I'm sure I'll find some cool places to write though, and definitely do not plan to be cooped up in the hotel the whole time.

While I do mean to mostly write while there, the place I've booked to stay at is right near the British Museum which I haven't visited before, and I am considering one of those big day tours (if they're not all booked out).There's one that goes to the Cotswolds which looks pretty amazing.

[from here]

Then of course there's the train trip up to Bangor (which is pretty northern) so I'll get a good chance to see the countryside then as well. I'm also very nerdishly excited about the neuroanatomy stuff too. 

So here I am again, thinking of the UK instead of focusing on my thesis... oops.

Uncertainty.

[from here]

There's a fair bit of it in my life right now. Like I mentioned previously, I really have no idea what will be happening after I finish my thesis. Academia is pretty competitive, and I need the experiments that I'm finishing up to have exciting publishable results that will make my CV look impressive so people will consider hiring me. However I have no idea what the results are yet (hopefully in a few weeks...), or exactly when I'll be finishing my thesis (but really hoping it's before my scholarship runs out). Another thing I'm hoping is to get into a short (one week) course I applied for in Wales. It's on neuroanatomy and if I get accepted they'll fly me over there and my accommodation is sorted too!! I'm supposed to find out by the end of May, so of course I've been checking my email every five minutes in case they've decided. If I get into the course, I might also take the opportunity to visit a few researchers in the UK and try to politely convince them to hire me. I still would really (really really) like to work in the UK obviously, however I have no idea how realistic that goal is either.

I've known since I was around 15 that I wanted to study psychology at university, and even knew which uni I wanted to go to. So it happened. When doing psychology I decided I really wanted to get into honours, so I did. This PhD opportunity pretty much fell in my lap too, so I've been pretty used to doing what I wanted and not having to wait long to get it. That is why this whole having-no-idea-what's-next thing is pretty unsettling. Perhaps being at uni for so long has just pushed back my 'quarter life crisis' a couple of years. 

Having said that though, I've received a lot of encouragement the last couple of days, which I've really appreciated. I had a great meeting with my supervisor Monday, where we made a very specific plan of deadlines for writing my thesis chapters. Since then I've been motivated and productive (and it's not even Productive June yet!) - I've completed two more papers that should be submitted to journals shortly, finished marking reports, and worked on my thesis a fair bit. I also had a meeting with another academic involved in my project and he made it clear he thought my thesis would be well-written, and he said he'd speak to some contacts he has in the UK about possible work. Most of all, Husband has been super encouraging. He doesn't seem at all concerned that things won't work out, and it's helped me not to crawl into a ball overwhelmed by all the things I need to do, but rather get to work and make sure I do my best. Because of that, I've actually felt much more positive than I have in a long time - unfortunately that doesn't change how busy I am!

[via]

Well here's what happened.

I didn't mean to take a 5 week break from blogging, honest. It's not that I was super busy, or super unhappy or unwell or something. I just didn't have a lot to say, and then I kept thinking I should wait until I have something super important or interesting to talk about. I still don't really. However I just thought I would write an update (that is potentially non-important, non-interesting, sorry) anyway. Like previously, I've broken it up into three categories:

[via]

Science: Some good news and some good/scary news. The good news is that my first first-author paper has been accepted for publication (old news for twitter followers)! This is a relief, as it had taken a while for it to get accepted somewhere. It will be out next month. The good/scary news is my PhD scholarship has been extended for 6 months. Good in that I will not be poor for the next 6 months, but scary because the confirmation email also included the date the scholarship stops: November 12. This then gives me a very specific date to try and finish my thesis by, and it really doesn't seem all that far away now... gulp. As for the fact that I have no idea what I'll do after that, well that's the especially scary part.

Spouses: Yep, still got one of those (although he's been slightly MIA recently since the release of computer game Diablo III). It's actually Husband's birthday tomorrow, and we're going out to play laser tag, which should be fun / slightly nerdy. We're also going out on Saturday night to a Brazilian BBQ place, which essentially involves being served larged quantities of meat.

Silliness: Well on a whim about two weeks ago I did something I've never done (or planned to do) before: I gave myself a haircut. I decided I was sick of how long my hair was, and impulsively grabbed some scissors and started hacking. After I did the first snip I regretted it immediately, but obviously had to continue. Towards the end I decided I should be sensible about it and used my hair straightener so I could make sure it was all even. It went from being half-way down my back to just above my shoulders. My (post-hoc) reasoning was that I'm contemplating getting a more drastic haircut (see picture below), but I hate going to the hairdressers (I'm sure they're very nice people but I really don't like all the pointless chit-chat). This way when I do go there's less hair to cut and dye, and therefore I'll be there for less time (??). 

[from my pinterest]

Well enough about me:

What have you been up to lately?

Have you ever done something strange/impulsive and you're not really sure why?
Is anyone else afraid of going to the hairdressers?

Dear Teenage Lozzz123

So after enjoying both Kirsti and Gina's letters to their highschool selves, I thought I would jump on that bandwagon when I realised I had plenty to say to the teenage version of myself. How this younger me will actually get this letter however, I haven't decided. I'm either thinking time-travel phonebooth...

[via]

...or letterbox that can deliver mail to the past. 

[via]

(Highschool Lozzz123 loves Keanu Reeves, so it's only fitting that I should use the time travel movies he's been in as inspiration).

Dear Teenage Lozzz123,

27.

So today I am officially in my late 20s (I was still trying to convince myself 26 counted as mid-20s). I know that's still not overly old as such, but it still feels like a bit of a bummer. However, having said that, I have noticed myself thinking lately some people in their early 20s are still quite immature. Who knows what people a few years older are thinking of me! 

I guess my point is, although I often lament 'being old', I actually am quite happy with my life right now. I've nearly (well hopefully) finished a PhD, and will (again hopefully) be on my way to a grown up person's job. I can then start considering other grown up things like buying a house, which will be very exciting. Also, as scared as I am to admit this - I'm looking forward to having babies in the next few years (I bet my mother is pretty happy reading this since she sometimes points out cute baby clothes for no real reason - hint taken Mum!). Mostly so I can create some science nerdlets (this is a new word I just made up which means mini nerd - oh I just googled nerdlet and apparently I didn't make it up, hmmph).

Anyhoo, since my main birthday celebration was Friday (at a Greek restaurant - yum), it's a bit of a quiet one today, except we are going bean-bag shopping. Yes that is what I requested as a present. Hopefully I get this one:

[source]

This, my friends, is a Snorlax (a Pokémon) bean bag. It is clearly awesome. Sadly I think it's a one-off, but you never know! 

P.S. Fun fact: I sometimes call Husband 'Snorlax' due to his sleeping antics.

2011 - A Review

Fireworks over Sydney Harbour [via]

For some reason I always am surprised when it comes to the end of the year. It seems as though the year went by so fast, and yet it takes as long as it always does! In the past New Years Eve (NYE) has been a big deal, and unfortunately it is often a let down when it doesn't live up to the hype. This year our celebration will be a fairly quiet one (hanging out at my sister's), but should still be quite fun. 

Usually on NYE just before the countdown to midnight I quickly take stock of the past year, without much proper time to reflect. So I thought I would put a bit more effort in this time, and I'm glad I did because I remembered some cool things. 

For me, 2011 was a year of NEW...

Something about work.

Well in what is basically completely copying from Little Missy Me who answered the following questions that came from here, I too have decided to jump on the bandwagon and talk about work stuff.

1. What is the worst job you have ever had?

I would have to say it's a tie, between the job I had at a bakery (which I've actually already mentioned here), and a clothes store. While at the clothes store I really liked most of the staff I worked with, I am really not cut out for retail. I kind of hate people (sorry people) so although I was supposed to approach each person who entered the store to greet them in a bubbly manner and make them spend all their money, I much preferred to go in the opposite direction and avoid them entirely, and just fold shirts and stuff. Even worse was when I had to work at the outlet version of the store which was super messy and the people were so cheap (would try to get you to give them a discount on a $5 item because it was the last one and not in their size - so what!?) and rude. Seriously, people wouldn't even say words to get my attention, they'd just click (one person even kind of hissed at me)! I was extremely satisfied the day I got to quit. Ok gripe over haha. 

2. Have you ever been fired?

Yes. Though I like to think that none of those situations were actually my fault, but actually due to this guy who I think was a job curse, or a harbinger of firings, if you will.  

3. What would your dream job be?

Well I think it would be a psychology academic (which I'm currently on track to be if I ever finish my PhD!), but also to be able to be a clinical psychologist and see clients too (which does require more uni, but I'm ok with that!). However, after I went to the zoo on the weekend, I also would be pretty happy working with gorillas. They are awesome, and it's a good excuse to include another gorilla picture!  

More of my zoo pictures here and also on my facebook page.

4. What did you want to be when you "grew up"?

I was a pretty ambitious kid. I was under the impression that doctors and lawyers were the most prestigious and smart-people professions, so I was happy to be either of those. However, psychology started to stand out to me as a teenager (which I spoke about a bit here) as the profession I really wanted to be involved in when I grew up. Something about it just clicked when I was looking into it, that made me think 'this is what I'm meant to do'. Also I do realise psychology is kind of a 'helping people' profession, and I've just stated earlier that I hate people - this is obviously a bit contradictory! So to clarify, I think I'll say I hate people out in public, who often seem to be selfish, loud and annoying (and clip their nails on public transport. Seriously this happened on the train on Sunday on the way to the zoo). However the workings of people's brains, and how things can go wrong (and how to fix it) really really fascinates me.

5. How old were you when you got your first job?

I think 16 or 17? It was towards the end of high school. It was at a little cafe/deli and I didn't mind it, except for the cleaning. However, this was the start of the job curse and I eventually got fired because they ran out of money to pay me (though now I think of it, perhaps that was just their nice way of getting rid of me because they thought I was crappy?). 

Well on the topic of work, maybe I should now go do some, hey! 

Fun vs. Sensible

After the excitement of agreeing to go away next year to the US and thinking about all the places we'd go, we then had to think of the serious (boring) stuff - like will we actually be able to afford this? I do think if we're careful in our spending the next year it should be ok - but considering I'm planning to submit my thesis before we go (aargh!) I will not actually have a scholarship when we get back. So we need to plan for having money for when we return also.

I'm hoping that the 'saving for something fun' thing will be a bit more motivating than the 'saving to be sensible' plan of the past has been. Apologies if this is not super exciting, but here are some things I plan to do to make this dream a reality:

Exciting News!

Well, for me anyway. I'm not sure how exciting you'll find this information, but it's my blog and I'll say what I want to hehe. It's also not so news-y for people who also follow me on twitter since I've already mentioned it there. But oh well. By the way, before I go any further I'd like to state NO I'm not pregnant.

Since I got back from New York earlier this year, I've been thinking it would be cool to go on a longer trip to the US, as New York is the only place I've been there, and Husband hasn't been at all. However it didn't seem like it would happen any time soon. Then yesterday morning I had a dream I was organising going and talking about which places to visit. When I woke up (at 4am mind you) I was very sad to find out it wasn't real. As Husband was getting up for work at the time (poor him) I sleepily asked him if we could go next year and to my surprise he said yes! So of course this meant it was extremely difficult to get back to sleep because I started calculating in my head how much money we'd need and could save, and my list of places we could go. I finally got back to sleep a bit after 7am. When I got up again a bit later, of course I wasn't really able to get much work done. I did however make an excel spreadsheet of the order of places I wanted to go to, and how many days at each place (yes, I know how nerdy this sounds).

"I want to go to there". [map from here]

Poor Husband when he got home from work got bombarded with all my plans. When I'm really excited about something I do seem to go a bit overboard and start organising right away (if only that excitement would return about uni work!). I've very begrudgingly nicely conceded however that he is welcome to think this through for himself and change my plans accordingly, since it's his trip too!

As it stands however we'll probably be going mid September next year, for nearly two months, getting back in time for Husband's brother's wedding in November. There is one potential glitch in this plan however - which is when will I be submitting my PhD thesis? I'm hoping that having a definite deadline of when I'm leaving the country will help me to actually finish up by then. As the time gets closer, I'll have to re-evaluate how likely this is. 

For now though, I should probably stop imagining all the places we might go, and get back to uni work, or maybe I won't be finished in time! I will post later on where we plan to go once Husband agrees with me helps decide our itinerary :P

If I believed in past lives...

London

I'd probably say my lives all must have taken place in the UK. It's difficult to explain, but even though I've only been there twice, for about 3 weeks total, I often feel pangs of home sickness for it. Looking at pictures of England, remembering my trips there, and watching certain TV shows (e.g. Time Team), make me miss it badly.

Windsor Castle

In particular, I love the history. One of the best things we did in London was the Jack the Ripper tour. While quite gruesome, learning about all the gory details, I loved hearing about London back in the 1800s. It's probably also why Sherlock Holmes is one of my favourite movies (also check out the Sherlock Holmes Pub in London - pretty cool). More than that though, I love the castles.  Some of my favourite places so far in the UK are Windsor Castle in England, and Cardiff Castle in Wales. One of my 30 things before 30 goals is to visit more castles. If I had the time, I would spend ages researching ancient and medieval history from that area. In fact, one of my favourite subjects and the best mark I ever got for an assignment at uni was actually for the medieval history course I did (so why you ask, did I do a science degree and am currently doing a science-based PhD? Well that's a story for another time). I almost considered joining the medieval society at uni (nerd alert!), however the guy I was speaking to about it was just a bit too into it that it creeped me out. I also tried to convince Husband that we should get married in medieval attire, but he didn't really go for it (though I almost got him to agree when I said he could wear a suit of armour)! Maybe this is a little sad to admit, but hearing the icecream man truck go past (which in Sydney plays Greensleeves) also makes me a little nostalgic. 
 

Awesome Stonehenge

When Husband and I went to the UK as part of our honeymoon in November, it was freezing. Call me crazy but I have to say I actually like the cold weather and much prefer it to Sydney's heat. In fact my two favourite days while over there, (visiting Windsor, Stonehenge, & Bath; and going to Cardiff Castle) were the two coldest days of my entire life. It actually snowed in Cardiff while we were there and it was amazing.

 

Snow at Cardiff Castle

So how come we don't move there? Well to be honest, I've thought about it. Perhaps as a post-doc after my PhD (which is usually 2-3 years in length). Husband even said he wouldn't mind. However at the same time, my whole life is here in Sydney (family, friends, church...).

So for now I'll just have to dream, and somehow organise nearly every future trip to involve a stop there.

Sigh.

Creativity attempt - complete!

So in my new quest to accomplish 30 life goals before 30, I became re-interested in #9: finishing my honeymoon collage. See here for the before shots.

And now for the finished product (prepare to be underwhelmed hahaha):

Love a good bandwagon.

So I have seen quite a few blogs recently that have lists of life goals they'd like to accomplish, usually 30 things before 30. Or you could be really ambitious like my buddy Anide and have 111 things to do in 2011! As I'm quite good at sitting around doing nothing, I'm not so brave as to attempt the 111... so I'll just have to settle for 30 things to accomplish before I turn 30 (which is coming a bit too soon for my liking)! 

So here goes...

You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.

[source]

- Homer Simpson. 

I am a chronic quitter. Seriously, here is a list for you:

• Piano: I quit because the lady who taught me was mean - she would yell "NO" at me whenever I hit a wrong note
• Karate: I got up to white belt, yellow tip (basically the lowest besides the white belt alone). 
• Tennis: wasn't good at serving
• Japanese: The teacher was mean
• Drama: I don't remember why I quit this one, apparently I'm quite adept at being dramatic (I'm sure Husband would agree!)
• Debating: I only wanted to be first-affirmative speaker (so basically just doing a speech without any debating)
• Swimming: I didn't like diving (I can actually swim, but never did learn how to dive properly, belly flops all the way)
• Hockey: Well I actually liked hockey, but I dislocated my knee during the first game. That sure was painful, and awkward. An ambulance had to come take me off the field. Maybe one day I'll play it again.
• There is actually more, but this is starting to be embarrassing and I think you get the point.

Husband Quotes

(in response to my telling him I’ve started a blog) "Does that mean you’ll be famous and make lots of money and have weirdos tell you you’re pretty and ask you to take your clothes off?"

…that’s the dream, I guess? :S