the great getaway- day 1

Just got back from my Easter trip to Wellington and Napier/Hastings yesterday. I didn't want my holiday to end!

I took over 600 photos in total, so I'll only pick a few to post here. More on facebook though.


Day 1- 12.04.09 @ Wellington

Arrived at Welly (the capital of NZ for those that don't know) at around noon on Easter Sunday with Michelle. The sun was shining- perfect weather! So good to see May again- she was our tourist guide for the day hehe.

big scary art created by the weta company- they're known for creating the creatures for Lord of the Rings, eg Smeagol

Mich & May

pointing at a Malaysian restaurant
speaking of which, there are HEAPS of Msian restaurants at Welly! (compared to only 1 at Dunedin haha)

I love the random art deco and sculptures around the city- you never know what to expect around the next corner. That's an umbrella at Cuba St, one of the main shopping districts

fern-like structures near the city council/town hall

looks like blown inside-out shuttlecocks to me hehe

orb thingy suspended in the air

more art around the harbour

cool artsy bridge- i think it looks like one of the ancient ships used by the aborigines

kayaking around the harbour
people just hanging around, having ice cream, and enjoying the scenery- that's life!

"solace by the wind" sculpture by the harbour. I call it the bronze dude who always get harrassed by tourists

*happy sigh* I can imagine myself sitting there on the bench reading my favourite book during the weekends, or just simply listening to my ipod while watching people walk by :)

family & kids enjoying the good weather

we wanted to ride the "famous crocodile", but due to time constraint couldn't wait till the next free time slot, hence the sad face...

lovely! :)

we were just sitting at the steps by the harbour and saw these guys collecting mussels

happy us!

having kaffee eis* ice cream at the harbour YUM!

more art I adore. These are found all over the harbour area, didn't have time to find all of them

It was love at first sight.

*BIG SIGH*

I'm now even more keen on finding a job there at Welly- it's just such a vibrant city, more restaurants, good food, more sunshine (though more windy), beautiful harbour, cool deco and sculptures everywhere.

At 5pm, May brought us to the church she's attending- ARISE church (founded by Planetshakers). Total congregation is around 7000 ppl, great energy and I loved it! The music team is so incredibly talented! Met some people from church after the service and joined them for dinner :) Didn't have much for dinner as we'd been eating whole day haha! HK bbq roast duck and tofu for lunch, ice cream, then Japanese cuisine at night.

Next day- took the bus to Napier to meet the Pancakes (Alex & Sam).

***

Came back and was greeted with good old Dunedin weather yesterday :P Had a group meeting today, and realised again the amount of workload this year GAH. Back to those late nights again, I guess.

much needed holiday

WOW this has got to be one of coolest screensavers ever: the DROPCLOCK.

Description from the website:

DROPCLOCK IS AN AESTHETICALLY INTRIGUING MOTION CLOCK SCREENSAVER. EVERY MINUTE OF REAL TIME IS NUMERICALLY EXPRESSED WITH HEAVY HELVETICA DROPPING INTO WATER IN SUPER SLOW-MOTION.

The free version is good enough. $15 to buy full version which I think is unnecessary since the free one is already so pretty :)


Download here at the official site.



Uses quite a bit of space so make sure that your comp can cope with the requirements: ram needs to be 512mb or higher. And the file size is pretty big for a screensaver too: 150mb.

***

Easter break is here!!!

I'm taking 5 full days off lab work! =D I think I deserved it since for the past month I've been working on experiments during weekends as well. Leaving for Wellington on Sunday morning and coming back on Friday. I almost double booked myself: scheduled a group meeting on next Friday at 3pm when I'm only arriving back at 3.15pm -_- But all's good.

Exam timetable is out already BTW; I only have 1 exam this semester on the 16th of June. A 3 -hour written exam (75%) plus an oral exam (25%) which will be given by 3 lecturers/research fellows. Very scary but I'll worry about that later.

Collecting data from today's experiment tomorrow; fingers crossed that it'll turn out well so I have 1 less experiment to repeat/run!

looking forwaaaaard

BLAH.

It's freeeeeeeeezing! and it hailed this morning. while I was on my way to the lab gosh.

My fuzzy possum merino gloves which has a hole right at the tip is not helping at all in keeping my fingers warm. At least it's relatively warm at the lab.

I had a blonde moment at the lab this morning :P

***

The fire alarm sounded (again) yesterday afternoon. The mock one was held last week. Just 5 minutes before I decide to pack up and leave for home. That means walking down 8 floors worth of stairs, and waiting in the cold while the firemen came to check out if there was anything serious. The 3rd floor lab caught fire apparently, nothing serious from what I heard- heh the 3rd year students. It felt as if it was a long time ago that I was once a 3rd year student.

This 4th year feels like a roller coaster ride. One day I'm happy that my experiments are going well; the next day it doesn't and I'm left wondering what and where went wrong. I guess in Msia we're used to being spoon-fed and just nodding and absorbing whatever the teachers say/ written in textbooks. In a way I'm still learning to be more independent and NOT cringe when calling my supervisor by his first name.

***

One of the longest place names in the world is found somewhere in Hawke's Bay: Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauota-mateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu (without the dash). Haha! I stumbled upon it while browsing through things to do and places to visit at Hawke's Bay when I go there with Mich and May this coming Easter monday. FYI it's a Maori name for a hill which roughly translates to The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one (thanks to wikipedia). That's 85 letters in total.

One place I'm keen on visiting is the Napier Prison. Taking a mug-shot looks cool!

an awesome weekend

The annual Hyde Street party was held last Saturday. The noise (and drinking) started as early as 7am when I woke up -__- gosh they must be spending a lot on booze. and decorations. Even on Fridays there were some people spray painting their fences & walls, putting up the couches (see pic below) and stealing road signs to decorate their flat.

And since my flat is at the corner of Hyde and Frederick Street, the noise was pretty bad. More than a hundred people gathered in the middle of the street, on rooftops (YEAH), threw beer bottles around when they got drunk, and even knocked on the door of my flat. The police and campus watch were everywhere on Saturday, probably just making sure there were no riots or couch-burning going on. Which didn't, thankfully.

The street still stinks (of puke and beer). Yeap it was that bad.

Thank God it only happens once a year.

I'm amazed at how they managed to move the couch up there

this was taken at 8am-ish

"Wall Street", the new mall next to Meridian

lunch at Golden Harvest :)
Shaza came back for a visit from Chch, doing a research thing for a few days here

A friend of a friend's cute lil son!

Shaza & Mich

the 2 Sharons
see I'm being nice by putting that LESS embarrassing pic of yours here ;)

It's nice having an afternoon off :) Instead of being stuck at the lab (which I was until 9.30pm last night) today, I attended the Student Away Day thing- it's just basically postgraduate students from different departments in the Health Sciences giving short talks about their research projects & some tips on how to survive being a postgrad student. Good food! yums. And it was nice spending time "bonding" with the other postgrad students at my lab.

WEeeeeeeee here I come Welly/Hawke's Bay =D wait for my arrival this Sunday!

the payoff

Oh happy day!

My experiment finally worked! =D not perfect, but good enough. My supervisor said "good" TWICE- which meant a lot to me.

I hate band aids. No matter how sticky they claim to be, they never stick long enough to my injured palm :( Doing experiments require me to wear gloves and wash my hands very often, and the band aid fell off halfway through the experiments today. Which was really scary especially since I dealt with blood today (not human, SHEEP blood heh); don't want to contract any of the sheep diseases. An open wound + unknown microbes in sheep blood = scary stuff & a very careful me.

I can't exactly say what bacteria I'm going to work on soon, but they are scary enough as well. Let's just say the diseases they cause are not very treatable, which means I can't daydream or think about shopping/food that often anymore while pippeting.

helping Waszowski to be vain

Busy, busy weekend. I'm on roster to play the keyboards Friday night, Saturday morning, and Sunday morning. The 1st two times for Encounter, third for church. Wow I've been on duty every single week since I got back to Dunedin; it's nice having a week off next week during Easter =)

Sigh. I'm so in love with the colourful scarf I bought while (initially window-) shopping with Chyi today. Good deal, too. Who knew I could actually spend $45 for 3 items!