Less talk more action

Well after we have talked a lot about a gang reunion some of us are actually doing something about it (and no, Rui and Susana meeting does NOT count). so I am proud to announce that after it seemed like it is not gonna happen there will be a small gang reunion in London between the 16th-17th of Oct that will include Ana, Nai and myself
be jealous!
love,
me (super-busy lately but still loving you)

Self-proclaimed Queen of Procrastination

How unfair is it that some people seem to never ever procrastinate (for example my mum) and I have to do all their procrastination for them? I spent ALL of last week NOT doing three really urgent things and now I'm going crazy not knowing what to do first. I think that was the problem in the first place. I don't know what to start with, unless something is due yesterday.
I don't get it! How do people make themselves do stuff they don't really feel like doing ON TIME?? If you happen to be part of this mysterious species, please leave me a note on what it takes.

Stuff I do like doing: planting tomatoes and capsicum in the garden and eradicating (even more thoroughly) another bush on the weekend.. ah it was so much fun! And going to a mate's parents' luxury farm (we call it the palatial palace, complete with spa and amazing view.) down the coast for the upcoming long weekend for some hard (on the Jette-scale ;) outdoor climbing to get back in the game. AND (!) welcoming summer! It's getting warmer and warmer, soon it'll be water-skiing time at Smithy's parent's place and then absurdly hot Christmas and perfectly warm New Year's Eve, just right for a pool party - if someone has a pool.. hmpf, well, there's always the ocean. :)
Unfortunately that reminds me of missing Christmas at home, long dark evenings with lots of candles, eating lots of good food and baking biscuits and having a real Christmas tree with real candles and real snow outside, not just spray-on white chemicals on shop windows. And skiing! I missed the Southern season again. Maybe I'll never ski again? :(

Right... rambling. I'll get back to writing the report I was supposed to have done by yesterday.

Kisses to all of you and especially each of you ;) jxx

I miss the CoHo

Something, somehow reminded me of the CoHo... the sporadic evenings spent there... the quaint lacquer tables... the din of the absolutely packed crowds drowned out by the absolutely brilliant jazz... and the exasperatingly loooong unending queues that led to the little pieces of heaven called nutella crepes. :)

I miss those nights. I miss you all.

And thank you Rui, I will be forever indebted to you for introducing me to nutella crepes.

Happy New Year!

Happy Ramadan!


I'm still not moved in after a whole month. I've been trying to be slick and stain these shelves that will hold my copious amounts of books, and it is taking forever! So after what seems like 20 coats of this junk, I'm moving on to the polyurethane coat. Lets hope I only need one of these.

Uni starts in T-minus 9 days! I finally got the information about registering for classes. I can't really do anything until I get my fafsa money. Which is our finical aid system. And let me tell you, they follow their own clock!

My mom has been freaking me out lately. She got this pendulum so she could ask it questions about her life. If the weight spins in a circle thats a NO, if it moves back and forth thats a YES. The damn thing scares the hell out of me! She keeps trying to get me to ask it things; who wants to to know about their future?! I'm perfectly happy letting the future come to me!

Thats all for now kids,

Godspeed,

G

Ramadan Mubarak

And our holy month of Ramadan (month of fasting) began today, so wishing you a blessed month. [I may be a little temperamental (mostly cranky) this month so apologies in advance (:]

Rosh Hashana or a bit of Judaism

Well this evening we will celebrate Rosh Hashana ("head of the year" or "beginning of the year" literally). In judaism the new day begins when the stars come out and not at midnight so this evening it will begin. The first month is in Hebrew calender is Tishrey (in Arabic Tishrin is the gregorian month that happens around Tishrey) and the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet is Aleph (yes the same aleph from Borges's short story and the same aleph from infinte sets in math, since Cantor was a fan) so the date is Aleph Tishrey

the month of Tishrey is filled with holidays. Rosh Hashana starts a period of 10 days in which people are supposed to abandon their sins and beg forgiveness from god and their friends. on the tenth day it's Yom Kipur which is a 25 hour fast where you pray a lot and according to tradition in that day god decides your destiny for the year to come.

5 days after Yom Kipur there is a 7 day holiday called Sukut in which you are supposed to lodge in a temporary home outside your house commemorating the 40 year journey of Israel from Egypt to Israel. people today though only build it and eat there but otherwise stay at home. one day afterwards is simxat tora (joy of the Torah) which is a celebration in honor of the Torah - the first part of our bible.

As for me I am going to go home tonight and stay there until Saturday eating and hopefully reading a lot

So I wish you all on the brink of a new year (the year 5768 according to our calender) that you have a Shana tova umetuka - i.e. a good and sweet year. and if you wish to practice some Jewish costumes you can:

a. eat apple with honey - to help make the year sweet
b. eat the head of fish - so we will lead and not follow
c. eat a pomegranate - so we will have as many good deeds as the pomegranate has seeds
d. wish your friends to be written in the book of life
e. wear white which is the color of purity
f. wear something new in honor of the new year

Happy new year guys!

The good the bad and the ugly

the good - I FINALLY got Neo connected to my wireless router after one of the weirdest malfunctions in the history of the internet. but when i changed my ISP connection from a dialer one to a fixed IP one everything was resloved

the bad - Portugal just beat Israel in the European basketball championship - I hate Portugal!!!!!

the ugly - I am back from the army! well it's not ugly but I just neede to tell you that.

that's it!

Hehe.. I told you GeorgeW is in town right? Well, this morning he did two things: went to a museum for an hour and talked to the Australian opposition leader (and most likely winner of the federal elections in about 2 months time). Both times his motorcade of 20 cars totally stopped the traffic in the city. It's crazy! You know what this whole APEC meeting is costing Australia?! It was budgeted at 300 million AU$ (~250 million US$) but blew out by another 40 million when W decided to rock up 2 days early. Nutsnutsnuts!
Around midday or so, the team from "The Chaser's War on Everything" a comedy/satire TV show managed to get into the high security zone and all the way to W's hotel by driving around in a motorcade with Canadian flags without ever even being asked who they were. They were arrested when they got out of the cars and one of them was dressed as Osama. They can be hold now until Monday when APAC is over. I mean all they did was show that all these millions spent on W's security are completely useless because Osama could get in any minute if he wanted. Or alternatively, that it's not at all about terrorists (as the government says) but about pissing of protesters and keeping them away from "the international world leaders" so the Australian government can be proud.
This is all so crazy! Apparently restaurants within the security zone aren't allowed to leave knives and forks on tables. This is so totally over the top!

Can't wait to leave tomorrow and sit in my tent for a week and climb a bit and miss this stupid summit and give the city and uni and all this stress the finger!
- Oh yeah, I'll be out of internet and mobile coverage for about 9 days from Friday arvo, so don't be alarmed if I stop bugging you on Skype and gtalk ;) Unfortunately that means I'm probably going to miss out on my chance to be part of the world mooning record :(

I wish I could take you all camping - and climbing! And not be sick and impatient at the same time...

Hugs and kisses - jxx

Bush eradication

I might have already told a few of you - with a lot of grrrrrrrrs and aaaaawwwwws and fist shaking and tantrum faking - what I did on Sunday instead of work or meeting friends: I eradicated a bush:

All the dirt bits without grass were covered by the sprouts of this nasty bush trying to take over our whole garden. So I spent 6 hours cutting off sprouts, ripping the out and digging through the dirt getting all the roots out.

Aaaahhh... nothing more rewarding than eradicating a bush.

It's almost symbolic as well, because George W arrived in Sydney today for some stupid convention costing Australia unbelievable amounts of money and all Sydneysiders an enormous amount of nerves. They're shutting down parts of the CBD around GeorgeW's hotel (yes, he rented a whole hotel for his entourage of 300) all week, mobiles won't work when motorcades are on their way, they introduced an extra holiday and told people to better leave the city altogether. Excuse me? I live here! I don't want GeorgeW or any other world leader around discussing stuff without outcomes. What b/s!!!
Ah, there's lots of other things going on to throw tantrums over - poor G knows all about it. Well, part of the tantrum throwing is due to Skype's bad connections, so maybe he was lucky and most of my rant(s) were blurred out ;)

Ramble... I'll go to bed now so that I can get up early and write a paper tomorrow by 8pm and send it to my supervisor the magic paper fixer...

Have I mentioned lately, that I still really miss you guys?

Oh yeah, we have our very own BLOG!

I completely forgot about the blog! But no worries, I didn't forget about you kids!

Heres a quick run down of the past few weeks:

Working around 50 hours a week flipping a house over. I'm replacing the plumbing, re-tiling the floors, and painting the interior and exterior, and really really hoping the next few weeks come and go fast. I can't keep doing this shit!

Also, I finally moved from Bellingham, where I have been living for the past few years and going to underUni. I've moved back in my parents for a little while while I things get up and off the ground with my new Uni.

I just came back from a wedding in Idaho (one state east of me) for my cousin, who is in the Air Force. It was a semi formal wedding, and thanks to a "What Would Yonatin Wear" attitude ended up being the most attractive and best dressed guy there. Unfortunately, I didn't meet anyone that I didn't already know and wasn't related to me and everyone on that side of the family has some mental complex. We're like those generic examples from Psyche Textbooks. Pretty sad, hopefully you'll all get to meet these people at my wedding. Should that reality ever manifest.

Finally, well to be honest, there is no finally. It just keeps going on and on and on and on. . . . . .

T minus 22 days until the 24 Sept. The first day of classes! Ah, I feel like a little kid again.

Cheers!

Geoff

I'm a grandma!!

Kamrunnahar went into labour this afternoon, and now I'm the proud grandmother of two beautiful kittens!

The name Kamrunnahar (Kamrun for short) is a little odd (...quite odd actually) in a Bengali context in that it is a human name of previous generations. However, my mother kept this name for a different reason: it's because my cat bites a lot and 'to bite' in Bengali is 'kamrano' and so she thought the name was very apt. Now when guests come over to our house I have to refrain from calling Kamrun because inevitably someone's mother or grandmother is called Kamrunnahar. So at first they get very shocked and possibly even offended when they see my furry little black and white baby strutting in under the name of Kamrunnahar but once they overcome the shock they usually guffaw when they hear the name was kept because Kamrun bites. 'kamrunnahar kamray!'

Sunday at noon...

Working through weekends is not a good idea.
You are probably think "Duh, of course not, silly! Why would you do that!?" And that's what I'm wondering. I had a reason to work through this and last weekend because of a paper deadline tomorrow, which I'm now not going to make anyway. But when I think back to the months before my trip, I was working through pretty much every weekend for about 10 weeks before I left. And I didn't have or didn't try to make any deadlines. There really wasn't anything stressing me. Of course, it also doesn't actually mean that I'm more productive during these times. When I say "working" that doesn't only doing stuff directly related to my PhD. It includes all the other things I need to do on my computer and that often need to get out of the way first. Some of it is procrastination, some of it is semi PhD-related like things to do with this SIG that I'm on the board of, uni admin stuff, teaching (actually, that was about 90% of what I did last semester) etc.
So what are the real reasons?
I think the first one is not a real problem: when you're doing a PhD there is always more to do. You can always try out something else, read a bit more, think about a new domain/experiment/data set/technique... (not that I do that bit much ;). That's the same for everyone and I know how easily I can stop thinking about all these things when something more fun comes along.
The second reason is more to the point: I'm a lame crowd animal - in case you haven't noticed. I just do what the people around me do and wait for something to happen (i.e. someone to call up and suggest doing something). Lately, in Sydney the people around me were Smithy. No-one else has been calling up (my fault for never calling anyone myself I guess) and Smithy's been busy 24/7 writing his thesis and with building the suspension of the solar car that he's designed in his thesis. So, it's been way too easy to simply pretend to be superbusy too and do nothing fun on the weekend because hey, I had to do work.
Can you believe this?? I'm sitting at my laptop for a whole weekend because it seems easier than organising to go climbing or camping or walking or at least have a coffee with a friend! I'm using "I'm such a diligent stressed-out little working bee" as a cover-up for "I'm such a sad boring lonely lazy bum".
So, it's 12 noon on Sunday now and I'm going to call everyone I can think of until I find someone to hang out with right now. Stuff the paper I'm not going to write anyway, stuff the conference reviews I have to have finished before Thursday, and stuff my stupid laptop for an afternoon! I'm sure it can keep itself amused.

If you catch me online, you have official permission to call me pathetic!