Autumn

See how good I am at keeping up with my blog nowadays...

Sydney has a definite Autumnal feel to it at the moment, not those crappy rainy Autumn days you get in England, but those all so rare days of beautiful clear skies with a slight nip in the air and leaves changing colour and falling all around. This weather has been around for about 2 weeks now, which has been a nice change from the weeks of rain that fell beforehand. It's started to get a bit warmer now, but it has been FREEZING cold; 2 weeks ago now it snowed in the Blue Mountains...in May! Now you all know that I never used to feel the cold and wandered around in shorts in winter in the UK - that has not been the case here; even though it only dropped to ~8C at night in Sydney, I've been layering up and even wearing gloves. I can't believe what a wuss I've become and am slightly concerned how I will cope in Svalbard...

This past week I have once again been a busy bee social-wise. I met up with my old house mate for the first time in a long, long time and enjoyed a good ol' catch up over some chocolatey delights at a chocolate cafe - YUMMY! My friend from Tassie (who I was working with in Antarctica) also came up for a very brief visit and it was great to catch up with him and in the process, try and persuade him to persuade his boss to let me go on more Antarctic voyages! I'll keep you posted on that one.

On Saturday I also had the pleasure of helping out on the field trip for which I do some marking. Imagine 270 exchange students (mainly American), all of whom are mostly hungover, trying to get the answers from you. I actually had a pretty good time and learnt that I look like someone from the film Clueless (I didn't agree when they showed me a photo), and that Americans are easily amused by the name Graham ("Gram"), especially when I have the same full name as someone from another movie, The Holiday. The offer of wedges from the students was a personal highlight of the trip...I think that was their way of bribing me to give them good marks!

All of the above, in addition to beginning the packing up of all my stuff (how organised am I?) has meant that I haven't had any time for more astro-geeking and photo-taking in general; Booo to that!

I'll end my ramblings there.

Fred ut ("Peace out")