Lamb Burgers

Crystal and I decided to try something a bit different last night. For obvious reasons, lamb is a lot less expensive in New Zealand than beef. Given our need to live on a budget, we decided to try making some burgers using lamb mince. They turned out really nice. I grilled some mushrooms to put on them as well. All in all, a culinary success, which is good considering that we bought enough mince to make burgers two nights.

My research is going alright. I spent a good portion of the day checking on my last shearing test. The test was finally finished near the end of the day. So, that's that. I'm not able to use the lab again for a few weeks. But I have some other stuff planned, including a field day next week and preping some samples for the Scanning Electron Microscope. I'm really eager to have a look at things in the SEM. It's really a huge part of my PhD work that I've mostly put off because I know it will be difficult. Nonetheless, I'm sure that it will be scientifically rewarding.

In my free time, I've been playing through Warcraft 3 again. Not sure why, just seems like a fun thing to do. I've been putting in 20-30 minutes per day on the Wii Fit, though I'm don't really seem to be losing weight yet. We'll have to see what happens after a week or two. I definitely feel like I'm getting a workout by doing the yoga, strength training, and aerobic activities. The balance games feel a lot more like fun and less like excersize, so I'm not sure how much they help, but I do a few of them anyways.

I've also started reading The Once and Futute King, which is a really good book. When I picked it up from the library, I had no idea that Disney's The Sword in the Stone had been based on it, but it became clear rather quick, and a check at Wikipedia confirmed it. A really good book so far. I've one more chapter to get through The Sword in the Stone and then I'm on into the later parts of Arthurian ledgends.

Another long abscence

Well, the last time that I posted, my wife had recently arrived and we were still settling in. Since then, I've been very busy with my research project. I've run a number of samples through the geomechanics lab and done some more field work. I have a lot of other things to talk about but many of them seem a bit silly and are mostly gaming related. Crystal and I are still making slow but steady progress in World or Warcraft. We'll soon be able to join the rest of our friends in end-game events.

I have recently sent several thank you cards to people who sent birthday or other cards or gifts. They are much appreciated, I'm just of the absent minded sort. So, several people, and you know who you are, should be looking for mail in the next couple of weeks.

Crystal has just submitted her application for a work permit, so we are hoping to get a positive response back soon. We ended up sending two large envelopes stuffed to bursting, containing evidence of our "partnership". The fact that we are married was not enough for INZ last time, so we have sent in letters from friends and family, as well as copies of our chatlogs and letters to each other as corroborating evidence. I don't think that they can dispute that we qualify as a partnership anymore.

I've applied for every descent scholarship that has come my way in the last few months. I tend to be limited due to my international status, but there are a few scholarship that I'm eligible for that other people aren't. Two of these would give us enough money to mostly pay rent and food, leaving whatever income that Crystal ends up with to pay her student loans. I can only hope that one of these will be approved.

I'm going to Australia in October for a conference. I still need to make the poster, but I have a grant for the travel costs. Crystal is going to help me with the poster design, once I get around to planning the content. I need to design another poster for the University competition as well. These are parts of my important task for the next few months.

I think I'll end this post here, since I'm busy with a number of other things as well today. Take care everyone, and I hope to talk to you soon.

Field Work and Sampling

After much waiting and anticipation, I finally made it to my field area to do some sampling. I'm glad that I waited. We had a beautiful day, and we were able to time the tide so as not to need to wake up before dawn. Sampling went really well. Matt (another grad student) and I made pretty quick work of all the sampling. Now I have a large number of samples sitting around, waiting to be tested. I'm planning to start work on them tomorrow, since Matt is busy graduating or something today.

Meanwhile, in the virtual world, I've nearly made it to level 58. Only another hour or so of playing will be required. More about this is available at The Gameslave. We're getting ready to implement new website design too. So, there's lots to check out over there.

Field Work

The New Zealand weather keeps trying to prevent progress on my thesis. I try not to be a fair weather geologist, but it is simply easier to work when the weather is dry. Combine this with the fact that my work is right on the beach and requires a low-tide in midday for me to work productively, and it becomes hard to find a good time to work. But, the plan is now to go out to work tomorrow. I'll be collecting samples mostly, but also working on getting a better hold on the stratigraphy of the area. Fortunately, I won't have to work too hard on that, as an MSc has been assigned to the general engineering geology of the area.

In the meantime, I have continued working on my paper research. I've also been playing a lot of World of Warcraft. Someday soon I will be able to go on raids with my friends. I think I only have about a week more to play before I will be in Outland.

International Journals

For the entire period of my study, one of my supervisors has encouraged me to check the international literature on my subject. Only recently have I begun to run into problems. I've found that, for most journals, articles are written almost exclusively in English. I'm not sure why this is, but I'll take advantage of it to read articles from Japanese and Italian researchers. In the last week I've found two articles that would be very helpful to me, but cannot be read because they are in other languages. The first is an article in French about the formation of clay minerals in some volcanic deposits. The second is an article in Japanese about a similar subject, although this one deals more with the successive changes in mineralization with age. They both have English abstracts which helps me get a general idea of the article, but does not provided the amount of detail that I prefer. If any who reads this blog (if anyone does) would like to translate either paper for me, let me know and I'll get in touch with you.

In other news, I'm still plugging away towards level 53 in WoW. I've discovered that the Searing Gorge is actually a viable questing zone, with decent XP and monetary rewards. I'm trying to decided weather to buy a normal level 40 mount, or just wait and save up for the Epic level 60 mount. Tough choices I have to say.

I received a package of books from my parents this morning at 7. I was a little upset at having to jump out of bed and throw some clothes on to answer the door, but I've been waiting for this package for some time. Now, I'm just waiting for the package that will carry my monitor cable for my desktop computer. When that arrives, I'll finally have a working computer for both Crystal and me. This will probably make our internet usage go up, but we enjoy playing together so much that I can't see this as a bad thing.

I've also been waiting for some form of email contact with my supervisors for quite some time. I finally hear back from one of them, and they remind me that I have a presentation on Tuesday. I had added it to my calendar and I still forgot about it. But its only 10 minutes, so I don't have to talk about much. The primary concern at this point is me relating the work that I've done to one of the organizations that provided funding for me last year. Personally, I think that if I have to give presentations that they should continue giving money.

Easter and Semester Break

Somehow, University here is already on break for two weeks. This means that I'm generally lacking guidance now. At least I have a few things to work on in the duration.

I've managed to play more WoW lately. I've been working hard trying to force my character to a level high enough that I can play with my friends again. I'm getting pretty close at this point.

Easter was great though. I spent most of the day with the Phyn family. This is the same family who invited me over for Easter last year. This time, Crystal and I spent the day together. I felt less homesick while I was there. Compared with last year, when it was my first major holiday that I was away from my family. But having Crystal with me made everything much better. She seems to be doing alright, and isn't too homesick herself.

The research is going well. I've finally made it through a huge paper on some of the younger volcanic units that I see in the Central and Eastern Bay of Plenty. Not stuff that I'll see near Tauranga, but certainly things that I should be able to find near Matata. The paper was huge. Included their raw data in the paper would have probably made it the appropriate length for a Master's thesis.