Photos of falling into the pool

Hay guys! Here are the photos of us jumping into the pool that I promised! Ten points to Dunx for getting them to me! U is ROX!

Sarah prepares to take the plunge!

I'm airborne!

Duncan can levitate...!

Random Fact For The Day:

The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000

Appologies!

I must begin today's post with sincere apologies to Tom. I didn't know that you were trying to avoid any information related to Oscar winners and so I thought that the sms I sent would be funny but instead ruined the best actor award for you.

I shall continue with a minor rant. Stupid people should not be permitted to breed! They should be shipped off to an island somewhere (say, Australia? :P) so that they can walk into inanimate objects on their own as opposed to with us around! I had to tutor medics today and they are by far the stupidest students I have EVER had to work with! They were completely unable to do simple mathematics, such as, how many times does 4 go into 10. I kid you not. I even explained with drawings and everything and they still couldn't get it!

On similar grounds, people who don't realise the size of their car should not be permitted onto the road! I cannot count how often I have arrived at Wits to discover that some moron has parked their car exactly halfway between two parking bays, presumably because they were scared that they might park to close to another car and have their doors scratched or because they were not confident enough in their own parking abilities to park like a competent person!

So, what have I been up to...? On Saturday I went...no, wait, it was Sunday. I went to my cousins house for tea, which is never dull! We ended up swimming and jumping off their trellis into the pool. I'll get photos somehow from Duncan and post them. It was so much fun! I recommend jumping off something high into a pool any day!

Then, that evening, I went with Sarah and Tom to pudding/supper at Moyo's in Melrose Arch. It was so nice! It was such a great place; the vibe was brilliant, the kous-kous that Tom didn't want to eat was good and the bread stuff was amazing! Another thing I'd recommend!

Then, Monday came like a ton of bricks and I went to the zoo to discover that you can get a good toasted cheese sandwich with a side order of chips and a salad for only R18! Not bad! I also had to TA for Kevin which was a full 3 1/2 hours of flowers and very chewey fruit pasteles!

Today was medics and that kind of killed the day. That and the fact that I overslept rather badly this morning! I must go now as I have an e-mail to write to Travis.

Random Fact For The Day:

Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time

It is a DANCE club after all...

Hello!



This week has been moderately more exciting than the last ones. I've certainly managed to get a lot more done than in the past which is always a good thing.



Firstly, I finished off the paper review that I was working with my supervisor on. The paper itself was shocking! It was so badly done! I suggested that the paper be outright rejected for publication.



I also tallied up all the hours of data that I have collected thus far for my project and to my joy realised that I only have something like 4 hours left to collect before I am done with all my baseline data collection! That means that I am practically half-way through the first phase of my project! Yay! There are two problems that stem from this whoever. Firstly, two of those hours need to be from one of the chimps that has been kept separate from the rest of the group as they are trying to introduce her to Josh (see this post for info), her son. Thus, I can't do observations because I need her to be part of the group. The second problem is that I now have to seriously think about the enrichment (basically a chimpanzee toy) that I want to put in for them..



On Thursday night, I got to see some of our old friend from the honours group. Most are now working for the NICD (national health lab - don't ask me what NICD actually stands for) and so we never get to see them. But we all got together and had dinner at a place that we used to frequent when Eebee (We miss you Eebs!) was still around. It was really great!



Then, last night, after one of the most busy days I've had in a long time, I went out clubbing with Duncan and David. We went to a club called 'Sutra'. It's where H2O is held, the rave that I went to for new years. It's a dance club but when we arrived, nobody was actually dancing! It was so irritating! Eventually, people started to move onto the floor but shortly thereafter, the DJ started playing such crappy music! It was unbelievable!



That is all that I can remember that I had to tell the world. Hope you all are doing brilliantly!



Here is a photo from H2O:

Oooo! I nearly forgot!

Random Fact For The Day:

Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine

I finally grew some balls!

Well peeps! It finally happened! I grew some balls!

You see, at our university, post-graduates (hereafter referred to as postgrads) have the honour of their own parking area. We pay a hefty R400 for this parking and we still have a hell of a hill toclimb on a daily basis to get from our parking to our respective places of work. So naturally, it is rather annoying when we discover that most of our parking is being taken up by non-postrads.

It happened many times last year and is by no means a new occurance at all! However, this year it has become ridiculous! For the last two weeks, the security guard who is supposed to control who gets to enter the postgrad parking, has allowed anyone who even shows an incling of any desire to enter through to our parking. And today when I returned from the zoo I was forced to literally drive around the parking area for 10 minutes looking for an open parking bay! It was all made so much worse by the fact that the temperature was ridiculously high today (apparently 36 degrees C in the city!).

So, once I had eventually parked, I decided that I'd had enough and stormed off to the building to drop off my stuff and then headed off to make a complaint. Now, for most people, this wouldn't be worth mentioning, but, as anyone who knows me would tell you, I never get angry. I do try sometimes but I just can't get it to work. Today however was different!

When I was dropping my stuff off, Helen arrived and asked why I was so flustered. I told her and she agreed to join in complaining about the situation. So the two of us stormed off to the secretary for the school of biology. She has the nickname of 'Professor Parking' as she is the one person who will not tollerate anyone stealing her parking. She suggested that we see the head of security.

We did this and ended up just speaking to his secretary who put us in touch with the person in charge of parking. I spoke to her on the phone and she appeared to be genuinely concerned about the issue! She promised that she would sort it out, including spot checks on who was there and to ensure that the security guard is doing his job.

Yay! 10 points to whoever it was that I spoke to! Even if she couldn't give a crap about our parking and faked the whole thing, she did a great job of faking it!

So there. I can be confrontational (sometimes)!

Random Fact For The Day:

Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants

My 100th POST!!!!

Yay! I'm 100! (This is the blog talking by the way)

Yes, it is true. This is my 100th post. And I can't even put up a celebratory photo because I'm typing this all out at my lab computer at Wits.

So, what has been happening...? The irritating guests eventually left on Sunday which was a great relief! I just can't handle the fact that they are such chain smokers! I'm not a smoker by the way, so it really irritates me when other people come to my house and smoke like it's their last day on earth.

Yesterday was the first time that I TA'ed for a plant-related practical and actually knew what I was talking about! It was great!

In the pre-lab lecture that the lecturer was giving, Helen, Kelly (a new masters student from Pretoria) and I sat and giggled. It made it much more interesting. At one point, Helen, as we had bought some popcorn during one of the between-lecture breaks, decided that it would be a good idea to flick one of the unpopped popcorn kernals at one of the students. Luckily her aim is really bad so she missed the student. Instead, the small piece of corn bounced loudly off every desk surface on it's trip to the front of the lecture theatre. Naturally we all thought that this was hysterical and collapsed onto the desk with muffled snorts and laughs. As we looked up we realised that NOBODY had noticed the whole ordeal! It was amazing! Not a single person had seen the high-speed piece of corn as it had wizzed past their head or bounced off their writing pad. It was kind of disappointing in a way...

The rest of that day really isn't worth writing about...

I'll write more at a later stage. I must go and get some stuff printed which potentially means having to give more money to the school secretary.

Eeek! They're here!!!!

I don't have much time (cue really tense dramatic music). They are here! The visitors are here for lunch. They are family 'friends'. I don't like them.

I have to go!

PS: The old one smells stranger than usual today...:(

Faithless kryptonite

So, to continue where I left off, I grabbed a couple of marulas and ran off to the swimming pool. I sat on the steps of the pool, partially submerged eating marulas. It was so nice! It has been ages since I've sat in the pool for an afternoon eating a fruit. It's a South African past time that at christmas, everyone eats a lot of watermellon and one of the things that many people do as kids is to sit in the pool and eat it. So, to sit and eat marulas like that is really nice.

After that, I went back inside and headed to my room to change. As I arrived in my room, I discovered that my sisters had gotten me some helium balloons for my birthday. I was thrilled! If any of you have ever breathed in helium and spoken you'll understand how three balloons can provide a great deal of entertainment. I immediately ran off to the kitchen with my newly obtained orbs trailing behind me in the air.

After thanking my sisters, I showed the dog the balloons. She didn't like them at all! So I tried to keep them out of her view. I immediately got to work at cutting the knot off the bottom of the first balloon. The scissors didn't work at all and so I had to run off to get another pair. Once it was open, I spent the next ten minutes in hysterics. The dog seemed unphased by the sudden change in my voice which was a little disappointing.

I then decided to phone Vanessa and speak to her with helium. I did so but she didn't seem very impressed. So I decided to try and see how the dog would respond to me callng her from the other side of the house in chipmunk. She reacted, in a big way.

It was really funny! She came taring down the passage barking like a mad thing and all her hair was standing up! Eventually I got close enough to her to calm her down a little because she was running around like a nutter.

At this point, there is a gap in my memory about what I did for the rest of the day...OH! Wait, I remember. I then watched 'Lucky Number Slevin'. It's really good! It was rather twisted but it was really well done! I subsequently watched a little of the extras from 'Jurassic Park: The Lost World'. It was really interesting.

Shortly thereafter, I went to find out what was happening with dinner as I only had half an hour before I needed to go to have celebratory cocktails with friends. It turned out that it wasn't even nearly ready. So I decided to go and have a shower before dinner. I did so and seeing as dinner wasn't ready, I then continued to watch the extras from the 'Lost World' DVD that my sister had got from work. Eventually, dinner was ready and I had to go. My family had a minor fit because I was trying to leave without having eaten. So I had to stay and eat before I could leave.

Eventually I got out of the house and sped off to get some petrol, fetch David and get to Melrose Arch in record time. After it all, I was only 20 min late which is rather impressive all things considered! I hadn't made a booking at all but luckily, the place wasn't too full, plus Bro. T managed to organise for us to all go up to the lounge area above the restaurant which was truely smashing (ten points Bro. T)!

We all had such a great time! Here is the full list of attendees:
Myself, Bro. T, Laura, David, Sarah, Tom, Athena, Sarah (my cousin), Graham (cousin's boyfriend), Sarah (Xena), Xena's boyfriend whose name I cannot remember, Vanessa and Brian.

We had such a great time! I had to leave relatively early though because I got a migrane and needed to go to bed as a result. But I had a fantastic time none the less! Thanks to all my fabulous friends who attended and to all those that couldn't for whatever reason. You is all ROX! I am really lucky to have pals like you guys! Ten points to you all!

The birthday gif list:

• One camping chair
• Three books ("Why Pandas Do Handstands", "Why Don't Penguins Feet Freeze?" and "Animals: an illustrated A-Z")
• A National Geographic calendar with chimps on the front
• One monkey-thing that screams at you when squeezed
• Cocktail cards (recipes and all kinds on must-know stuff about cocktails)
• Some amazing white chocolate
• A CD voucher
• Marshmellow fluff
• 3 Helium balloons
• Faithless's new album ('To all new arrivals' - It's amazing! It's like Faithless, fused with a little Chicane and a little Fatboy Slim)
• A piece of stress kryptonite (Kinda like a stressball that is rock shaped and glows in the dark)
• A pack of Mike and Ike's (My favourite sopository-shaped sweets!)
• A CD that I leant to someone ages ago and have now recieved back!
• Three T-shirts
• A bottle of Malibu (From my grandmother!?)

Random Fact Of The Day:

Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode