Saturday 2 October 2010

Day 237!

Bonjour,

I just worked out that it has been 237 days since I left England (the first time); doesn't time fly! This week has been pretty eventful with activities such as house-hunting, attending Sydney Uni bush walkers meetings, and Antarctic medicals being the most exciting (plus obviously slaving away with Matlab). After stressing about the medical for a few weeks now, my time came on Friday to head down to the city and face the dreaded Dr. Having rarely been to the doctors, and definitely never having a full-on medical, I was apprehensive to say the least. My fears (at least for the moment), were put aside by the very friendly nurses who took my blood, checked my eyesight, hearing, gave me an ECG, and checked my urine sample. I was, however, not very impressed with the radiography department when I went for my chest x-ray; they were pretty rude and barely said two words to me - you best come over and teach them a thing or two Michael! It was then time to see the Dr. who went though some forms and generally checked me over, and after 2.5 hours, I was able to leave. Everything was generally OK, but I won't go into the details here for obvious reasons. I'm not sure when I know if I will be able to actually go to Antarctica; I imagine it may take a while for the results to come though, then to send them to Tasmania etc.

This weekend is a bank holiday, or as the Australians like to call it, a "long weekend". In typical fashion, this means the weather is forecasted to be pretty bad, with a fair few showers/thunderstorms. This obviously didn't stop me going out on my usual walk, but this week, there was a difference, I wasn't on my own! SHOCKING...! I have found myself a new friend from the CCRC who has also bought a new DSLR (hers happens to be better than mine, but to be fair, she is a post-doc so has more money!) . We met for breakfast (how civilised of us) with another of her friends who again, has just bought a DSLR (he is another of the post-docs husband), and off we went on a walk with the sole purpose to take lots of pictures, play with the cameras, and generally geek-out about photography. We must have looked like right idiots! It was great to get out again and use my camera, and even better to have found some friends who have also just started out in photography; hopefully I can learn a thing or two from them. It wasn't a very successful trip photo-wise, but as I said last week, I am still learning. Here are a few of the better pictures; still no whale shots!

A bird of prey which was sat eating a lizard- I know the bird isn't in focus but it flew away straight after this shot was taken so I couldn't get another.





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