Thank you Shawnie Fever!

Also, Merry Christmas to all! So happy to be home...

slip sliding away

Eeeeek! Somehow time (as it is wont to do) has flown by and suddenly I have less than two weeks left before I leave. There is WAY too much to do... and this time no Steph around to help me do it! However, the local charities have been very helpful. Every week or so a different one seems to leave an empty bag in our mailbox asking for donations. In this manner, I have got rid of several bags of stuff without having to move it anywhere. It even beats putting up a freebie ad on Craigslist.

Work continues apace. My supervisor came back, still deathly ill, and had two solid days of meetings during which I managed to see her once or twice. Then she asked me if I would mind running down to London to pick up some important documents for her. I found out for sure I was going on Tuesday afternoon at 2pm. Caught the 4pm train to Banbury - it's about a 4.5 hour train ride. Stayed that night, got up early, went into London, picked up the stuff, shopped for 45 minutes, and got back on the train to Bangor. Talk about your whirlwind trips. Unfortunately, the train back was 20 minutes late leaving and decided to go insanely slowly on the journey, so I missed my connection at Crewe (since we were 45 minutes late by that point) and ended up spending an extra hour hanging around Crewe station. YUCK. Oh well. All part of the job, I suppose. Supervisor is now in India, and by the time she returns I will be nearly out the door.

Also the train was full of chatty people. One guy who couldn't believe I was old enough to do my PhD ("You must be older than you look!") - I didn't have the heart to tell him I also spent five years bumming around and am even older than he thinks. Then he left, and a Singaporean businessman got on and started asking me detailed cultural questions about Britain. No matter how many times I explained I'm not from here, either, he didn't seem to get it. "What is the age of marriage in Britain? Is the nightlife better in Manchester or Liverpool? What should I get my British business associate as a gift?" good lord.

In other news, saw Lily Allen in the paper wearing this dress, the day after I wore it to Club de Fromage in London. Clearly, Lily is taking style tips from me. Also, thanks for the dress, mom!

CREEPY BRAIN

Was just speaking to my supervisor (who is deathly ill, has an ear infection, and is climbing on a plane tomorrow to go give a talk a huge conference, then flying to Argentina - while concurrently attempting to direct the renovation of her bathroom and supervise a PhD student who's finishing next week). She's got her talk nearly written and gave me some advice about talking in front of people.

She says she always makes sure she has the first and last sentences written, and delivers them exactly. She ad-libs the middle, but this way the beginning (when you're nervous) is always okay, and the end (when you're running late) is concise. Sounds like good advice to me.

She also said that when you're speaking in front of scary people, you have to remember what really matters (aka the "Apple Pie Trick"). She's been told she makes the best apple pie in the world, which is what she remembers whenever she's up there at the podium: people might heckle, but they probably can't make apple pie nearly as well - so who cares what they think? :P
Sounds dumb but have a feeling it might work for me! Will road-test this next time. Anything that will help me convince myself it's not important seems to automatically make me do better at anything nerve-wracking, like public speaking or interviews.

in other news: Madge has sent me some brain pictures with boggly eyes! Thanks Madge! Creepy, eh? The section has been taken right through the eyeball! SO COOL.

Anne has a Brain

How freaking cool is this??! Almost makes all the time stuck down there scanning OTHER peoples' brains worthwhile.





Happy Remembrance Day. I was probably silent at 11.00, but sadly it's because I was stuck in the scanner running yet another subject. 19 down, one to go... and that one is proving impossible to find.

Popty-ping!

Things I learned at the pub:

The Welsh word for microwave is popty-ping, from popty, meaning oven or bakery, and the microwave sound PING.

That is by far the coolest Welsh word ever, and I will be keeping that one for future use.

Money worries

I got paid!!!!!!

Sorry, but I am excited. It has been a LONG year of not being entirely sure where the rent is coming from. The problem is that the university's casual payment system requires that you submit your timesheet by the 15th of the month, meaning you only ever get half that month's pay by the end of it. As rent is due on the first of the month regardless, this is a pain. In August I actually had to request an "emergency cheque" be issued. However, this month I got my October pay and the second half of September as well, and am very excited to have money left over. Having the Kiwi around is helping too - very nice to have a housemate who consistently pays rent (and if he notices I'm worried about money towards the end of the month, he always pays early, which is a huge blessing).

In other good news, I just got the unofficial word that I did "very well" on my thesis. Official marks are not released till March (!) but I am very very happy to hear I did well. 'Twas a lot of work. So here's official thanks to Steph, Del, Claire and the Kiwi for their help with editing/data analysis! Think it made a huge difference to the end result.

Back into the fMRI scanner this afternoon to run one more subject, but the bigwigs for this project were up from London last week and so the worst of the stress (on my part) is now over. Spent the day with a film crew following me around! That was a new one and will probably never happen again. Jordan I ain't. Was very weird having boom mikes hovering above me and giant bright lights shining in my face as I ran subjects. However, the film crew was lovely and easy to get on with, and I learned some interesting things about their jobs (plus they let me ramble on about what I will be doing for my PhD!) So in the end, despite the worry, it was quite a fun day and all went relatively well. (And by relatively well, I mean the program for the scanner didn't crash until AFTER the bigwigs had left - although the film crew was still looking over our shoulders!)

Pumpkin Soup!

Here is a picture of the pumpkin soup-in-pumpkin, and one of the Kiwi dishing it out.




I have been asked for the recipe, and don't have one per se. However, I have muddled this together from the correspondence between the Kiwi and his sister regarding it:
PUMPKIN SOUP

Cut a lid in the top of the pumpkin, with your knife angled so the lid doesn’t fall in (like a Jack-o-lantern, with the stem as the handle). Scoop out the insides.

Fry some onion and garlic and throw it in the pumpkin. Add salt and coconut cream. Fill with boiling water and add some red lentils and nutmeg.

Put in a shallow oven-proof dish and bake at 350F for about an hour. Keep checking to see if it looks done. When it looks finished, mix up and scoop some of the pumpkin into the soup (being careful not to pierce the pumpkin-bowl or make it collapse!)

The Kiwi’s sister Rosalie says she sometimes makes one of these for each guest in a small pumpkin, but the Kiwi did one enormous pumpkin and it worked fine.


Here is a picture of the added-sugar-free banana split:


Think it looks pretty nice and dessert-ish! It's just a banana filled with pineapple, with coconut cream on the top.

And finally, since I'm posting photos, some Iron Age huts we came across on a walk near Holyhead (South Stack - it's a sort of bird sanctuary, and you can sit on the mountain and watch the boats to Dublin go out).




And this I just thought looked cool!