It's finally here. That stage in your research we have to write everything up, and spend hours and hours in front of the computer typing furiously. It's strange because you never really think that it'll come about. But one of those things that you always imagined will eventually happen in the future but it'll never really happened to you. Sort of like being mugged…
But the worst part of it all is the sudden realization that you will, in fact, have to find a job at some stage in the near future. Now this wouldn't be so bad, were it not for the fact, that I have absolutely no clue what I want to do. Actually, that's not entirely true. I do know what I want to do, it's just not necessarily available or an option.
Over the last few months have been sending out my CV to a whole host of different potential employers, both locally and internationally. I know that doing this is probably a good idea, but it can be incredibly frustrating. The fact that the majority of people that you send your CV to don't actually respond, doesn't really help much.
I did once receive a response from a UK based group that I was applying to work with. I had sent them my CV, along with a very enthusiastic e-mail, detailing exactly what it was that I was looking for, which coincidentally, was pretty much anything. They responded with an e-mail saying that they would love to have me come and work for them and that I must please give them as much information about myself as possible, which I did shortly thereafter.
Now you would think that this would mean that perhaps they were actually interested. However, there distinct lack of response thereafter, led me to think otherwise.
Lesson of the day: if you are an employer, please have the courtesy to respond to potential job applicants! It's most frustrating to be left in the dark...
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
'The most random thing...cont.
Blogger is being retarded and won't let me make a long post, so you'll have to read this in installments...
So, this film crew were running around the zoo, interviewing Dominic and film various animal species. Keith continued to question me about all my research. I explained my volunteer study and, after noting that this obviously wasn't what he was looking for, I volunteered information on my other work. I began by mentioning the study that I conducted looking at the behaviour of chimps in single-sex groups. At this point Keith's face lit up and he said something along the lines of, 'That's just what we are looking for!'
He proceeded to explain that the theme for that episode of said talk show was, what he called, the Patriarchy VS Matriarchy debate. He further explained that he would like to interview me along with Dominic on the topic.
Not thinking, I assumed that he meant, perhaps, at some stage in the future, we could organise it and he'd let me know. But this was not to be. Moments later the cameras were on, there was a mircophone and boom in my crotch and Dominic and Keith were practicing their entrance walk. Meanwhile, Athena had gacefully and cunningly darted inbetween the film crew and was standing behind them all grinning at me.
So, completely unprepared and, to a degree, in a state of shock, I was interviewed. Part of the interview was asking about bonobos, which are a species of chimp with a notorious sex life. It was really awkward being asked, and I quote, 'Who do you think has the better deal? Bonobos, or chimpanzees?' I responded with, 'I'd have to say, bonobos...'
Overall, it was quite fun, but definitely the most random thing that has happened to me in a long time!
So, this film crew were running around the zoo, interviewing Dominic and film various animal species. Keith continued to question me about all my research. I explained my volunteer study and, after noting that this obviously wasn't what he was looking for, I volunteered information on my other work. I began by mentioning the study that I conducted looking at the behaviour of chimps in single-sex groups. At this point Keith's face lit up and he said something along the lines of, 'That's just what we are looking for!'
He proceeded to explain that the theme for that episode of said talk show was, what he called, the Patriarchy VS Matriarchy debate. He further explained that he would like to interview me along with Dominic on the topic.
Not thinking, I assumed that he meant, perhaps, at some stage in the future, we could organise it and he'd let me know. But this was not to be. Moments later the cameras were on, there was a mircophone and boom in my crotch and Dominic and Keith were practicing their entrance walk. Meanwhile, Athena had gacefully and cunningly darted inbetween the film crew and was standing behind them all grinning at me.
So, completely unprepared and, to a degree, in a state of shock, I was interviewed. Part of the interview was asking about bonobos, which are a species of chimp with a notorious sex life. It was really awkward being asked, and I quote, 'Who do you think has the better deal? Bonobos, or chimpanzees?' I responded with, 'I'd have to say, bonobos...'
Overall, it was quite fun, but definitely the most random thing that has happened to me in a long time!
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The most random thing...
So I've not posted in a very long time, but I've been very busy, learning to Scuba dive, writing up my masters dissertation, going on 60km cycle races without any training...that sort of thing. But this post isn't about that. No, this post is about something that happened to me yesterday while I engaged in the seemingly benign act of chimpanzee observations at the zoo...
I was observing with a friend who is also one of my volunteers, Athena. It wasn't a fantastic observation day as there were countless numbers of irritating school children running amok in the zoo, hurtling food items whily-nilly at the chimpanzees, which always puts a dampener on things. None the less, we had been observing for about 20 min, not counting all the times I had to stop to shout at children. Suddenly, I felt a hand slap my side and a voice said, 'Howzit Bud'?'
As one may have guessed, this doesn't happen very often when one is doing chimpanzee observations...
I finished marking the behaviour I had just observed, being a scientist data collection comes first, and turned around. I was surprised but relieved to see that the slapper was Dominic, the curator for carnivores at the zoo. He's a really nice guy, who I've never really met but always insists on smiling and being very friendly towards me. Better that than the alternative I figure...
So I greeted him and we chatted a bit about how annoying the little children are. Then, he turned around and spoke to some people behind him. 'Don't you want to speak to him instead,' he said, referring to me. 'After all, he studies chimps...'
The small gathering behind him concluded that this was a good idea and a tall individual with an...interesting beard, approached me. He introduced himself (anyone who knows me knows that I am hopeless with names, so for the purposes of this post, he shall be called Keith - it's really just to protect the innocent...) and began asking me about my research and what I did. It was at this point that Dominic explained that they were a film crew who were shooting a small insert for a talk show and that they had been around the zoo looking at the different animals.
I was observing with a friend who is also one of my volunteers, Athena. It wasn't a fantastic observation day as there were countless numbers of irritating school children running amok in the zoo, hurtling food items whily-nilly at the chimpanzees, which always puts a dampener on things. None the less, we had been observing for about 20 min, not counting all the times I had to stop to shout at children. Suddenly, I felt a hand slap my side and a voice said, 'Howzit Bud'?'
As one may have guessed, this doesn't happen very often when one is doing chimpanzee observations...
I finished marking the behaviour I had just observed, being a scientist data collection comes first, and turned around. I was surprised but relieved to see that the slapper was Dominic, the curator for carnivores at the zoo. He's a really nice guy, who I've never really met but always insists on smiling and being very friendly towards me. Better that than the alternative I figure...
So I greeted him and we chatted a bit about how annoying the little children are. Then, he turned around and spoke to some people behind him. 'Don't you want to speak to him instead,' he said, referring to me. 'After all, he studies chimps...'
The small gathering behind him concluded that this was a good idea and a tall individual with an...interesting beard, approached me. He introduced himself (anyone who knows me knows that I am hopeless with names, so for the purposes of this post, he shall be called Keith - it's really just to protect the innocent...) and began asking me about my research and what I did. It was at this point that Dominic explained that they were a film crew who were shooting a small insert for a talk show and that they had been around the zoo looking at the different animals.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Hell hounds and sleeping late
'Sup gangsta's?
It's been ages since I last blogged, and, as usual, the reason is that things have been getting a little hectic of late. The latest event-o-hecticness has been house-sitting for my aunt and uncle while they cruised along french canals on a riverboat with their daughters. I always love house-sitting for them because they have a really nice place and I get to be away from my family. Now, don't get me wrong, I love them all very much and I love being with them. It's just that a man (it feels SO wrong to refer to myself as a man...it should say 'boy', or at the worst 'guy') needs to feel independent, even if it's not real independence. And I love the freedom of living on my own, having to cook for myself (I LOVE COOKING!!! The novelty will ware off, I'm sure...) and just generally living at my own, albeit slowish, pace.
Coupled with the glorious fantasticallity of house-sitting, comes the actual job of upkeep of the house and it's inhabitants. My aunt and uncle have a cat (previously two cats...a story for another day for those who don't already know it...), a dog and a whole host of potplants. The first and last on that list are a piece of cake to care for, despite my constant forgetting to water the plants. It's the dog that's the problem.
He's a black labrador retriever. He's not even a year old and he has already wraught more damage on that house than a mob of angry peasants storming a castle. In the first week that I house sat for them, he managed to do the following. I kept a list, for my own amusement and to ensure that I could report the horror to the rest of the world via this, my blog.
10/08 Woke up to find that the dog had, during the night devoured a frisbee, a DVD cover, a pack of Prestik sticky putty and a full pack of 'Happy Birthday' stickers, leaving the kitchen floor coated in small festive birthday wishes and bits of plastic.
11/08 Woke up to find that the dog had left, not one, not two, but THREE steaming brown mountains on the kitchen floor. Coupled with this, the mutt had somehow managed to pee UNDER a couch in the TV room! (How a dog does this, I do not know!)
12/08 Woke up to find another turd on the TV room floor.
13/08 Dog obviously felt that previous days present wasn't sufficient and doubled his efforts: two piles of processed dog food on the floor.
14/08 For some reason the pooch was so excited about the prospect of going outside in the morning that he wet himself...and the floor...
15/08 The dog once again felt that he needed to give more. He pooped on the floor again (Thank God for tiles!!!)
16/08 Awoke to discover the remains of a book of unknown title (apparently something to do with buffalo from what I could make out of the pieces of the cover I could find...), a series of magazines, several unopened letters of my aunt and uncle's.
This is but a taste of the horror that is this dog. Coupled with these little daily extras was constant bringing-in of bits of garden, the removal of several bits of paving and the attempted and (luckily!) failed devouring of a garden hose.
It's been ages since I last blogged, and, as usual, the reason is that things have been getting a little hectic of late. The latest event-o-hecticness has been house-sitting for my aunt and uncle while they cruised along french canals on a riverboat with their daughters. I always love house-sitting for them because they have a really nice place and I get to be away from my family. Now, don't get me wrong, I love them all very much and I love being with them. It's just that a man (it feels SO wrong to refer to myself as a man...it should say 'boy', or at the worst 'guy') needs to feel independent, even if it's not real independence. And I love the freedom of living on my own, having to cook for myself (I LOVE COOKING!!! The novelty will ware off, I'm sure...) and just generally living at my own, albeit slowish, pace.
Coupled with the glorious fantasticallity of house-sitting, comes the actual job of upkeep of the house and it's inhabitants. My aunt and uncle have a cat (previously two cats...a story for another day for those who don't already know it...), a dog and a whole host of potplants. The first and last on that list are a piece of cake to care for, despite my constant forgetting to water the plants. It's the dog that's the problem.
He's a black labrador retriever. He's not even a year old and he has already wraught more damage on that house than a mob of angry peasants storming a castle. In the first week that I house sat for them, he managed to do the following. I kept a list, for my own amusement and to ensure that I could report the horror to the rest of the world via this, my blog.
10/08 Woke up to find that the dog had, during the night devoured a frisbee, a DVD cover, a pack of Prestik sticky putty and a full pack of 'Happy Birthday' stickers, leaving the kitchen floor coated in small festive birthday wishes and bits of plastic.
11/08 Woke up to find that the dog had left, not one, not two, but THREE steaming brown mountains on the kitchen floor. Coupled with this, the mutt had somehow managed to pee UNDER a couch in the TV room! (How a dog does this, I do not know!)
12/08 Woke up to find another turd on the TV room floor.
13/08 Dog obviously felt that previous days present wasn't sufficient and doubled his efforts: two piles of processed dog food on the floor.
14/08 For some reason the pooch was so excited about the prospect of going outside in the morning that he wet himself...and the floor...
15/08 The dog once again felt that he needed to give more. He pooped on the floor again (Thank God for tiles!!!)
16/08 Awoke to discover the remains of a book of unknown title (apparently something to do with buffalo from what I could make out of the pieces of the cover I could find...), a series of magazines, several unopened letters of my aunt and uncle's.
This is but a taste of the horror that is this dog. Coupled with these little daily extras was constant bringing-in of bits of garden, the removal of several bits of paving and the attempted and (luckily!) failed devouring of a garden hose.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Damn! This CD is good...
So, on Friday I went and bought myself a CD. I was given a gift card by a friend for my birthday earlier this year and I hadn't used all the credit on the card yet, so I thought, before it expired (assuming that they can do that...) I'd better go spend the remaining money.
So I went off with my sister to go and select a CD. I was down to three options: The soundtracks of 'Hero' and 'V for Vendetta', both great movies with good music, or a compilation of the singles of Basement Jaxx, a UK dance act. It was a tough decision, but I went with Basement Jaxx and I'm regretting it now. However, the regret is for strange reasons...
The CD is AWESOME!!! I can't get over how cool it is! I love it! But I hate it at the same time! It's terrible because the music is so catchy that I end up with one song stuck in my head for hours on end. It's incredibly frustrating! Mostly because, as much fun as it is to sing to ones self, one can never do the original justice, leaving you with that well-that-was-crap feeling.
Hats off to Basement Jaxx!
So I went off with my sister to go and select a CD. I was down to three options: The soundtracks of 'Hero' and 'V for Vendetta', both great movies with good music, or a compilation of the singles of Basement Jaxx, a UK dance act. It was a tough decision, but I went with Basement Jaxx and I'm regretting it now. However, the regret is for strange reasons...
The CD is AWESOME!!! I can't get over how cool it is! I love it! But I hate it at the same time! It's terrible because the music is so catchy that I end up with one song stuck in my head for hours on end. It's incredibly frustrating! Mostly because, as much fun as it is to sing to ones self, one can never do the original justice, leaving you with that well-that-was-crap feeling.
Hats off to Basement Jaxx!
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Slurry birthdays
It is a tradition within the animal behaviour research group at the University of the Witwatersrand that when it is someones birthday, we throw a party. The parties are usually surprise parties, with some being bigger surprises than others. The last one was hosted yesterday. And it was a big surprise...
It was a joint party for Brian and Sneha, two fellow MSc students. Both had had birthdays in the last month, and we hadn't managed to organise parties for either of them on time, so it was a combined belated birthday party. After about two weeks worth of organisation and coordination between Helen, Megan and I we finally picked a date and set things up. I'm not entirely sure who did the actual setting up because, I left to go and do observations on the chimps at the zoo and when I returned, my lab was the picture of festive fun.
Through this, I learned a very valuable lesson, appropriate for anyone who is planning to throw a party at any stage in the future. Silly string is a bitch to clean up. It gets everywhere and appears to chemically bind to linoleum floors and almost all types of paint.
I also learned that a dust-pan makes an excellent silly-sting scraper.
The party was not expected and so Brian and Sneha were greatly taken aback. To add to this, shortly after being thrust through the door into the lab, they each had a cup shoved into their hand filled with jello-shots.
For those who have an intact liver or are innocent, jelly-shots are just shot-glasses of jelly (that's Jello for you Americans out there) that has been mixed with vodka or some other alcoholic beverage. I've only ever had them once. Given that I am a vegetarian, I don't eat gelatin, the principal component of jelly, and so was spared having to take jelly-shots. The others all told me that they were very strong...
It can't have been as bad as Govan's birthday last year though. At that party, it was a rule that if you walked through the door, you had to drink a mandatory 'shot' of vodka. It was 09h00 and a 'shot' was what most would consider to be half a cup. My supervisor has a heavy hand and sick sense of humour.
Part of the wonder of yesterdays birthday celebrations was the random birthday crap that Helen managed to buy at a ridiculous price from china town. This included balloons like the one pictured below which were always humorous and sometimes, a little creepy...
All in all, a fun time was had by all and we undoubtedly look forward to the next one...which should be Megan. Oh what pleasures await...!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Another one bites the dust...
Tonight on the news, it was announced that Robert Mugabe, current self-appointed president of Zimbabwe, no longer has control of the country and that it has now fallen into the hands of the Generals and ex-militia that formerly supported him. Coupled with this, there have been reports of escalating violence in the country and the ruling Zanu PF group are claiming that it is a result of the opposition party, that majority of whom withdrew from the recent run-off election between them and Mugabe for fear of their lives, are mobilizing, training and arming themselves. The country is in the state of a 'minor civil war'.
Why am I suddenly delving into the realms of international politics? Because, I am ashamed to admit, now it affects me. It is a horrible thing when one realises that you are just as bad as all those people who just don't give a crap about Africa because it's not on their doorstep. Well, now it is on my doorstep and I am heartbroken.
I love Africa. I'm not entirely sure why I do (living here probably had something to do with it...), but it occupies a very special place in my heart. For example, I can't help but choke-up when I hear African choirs singing. It's bizarre, but true. And now to see another African country dissolving in the corrosive effects of corruption and loonies, I am truly sad. Not just for the people who may die, be raped, mutilated or forced into service against their will, but for what the whole situation says about Africa. It says, Africa is a place with no hope. If one of the most successful and rich countries on the continent crumbled as easily as Zimbabwe did, just because of one man with syphilis, what hope is there for the rest of them? It sounds horrible, but I am getting to a stage where I have lost all faith in current world leaders and really wouldn't mind if some sort of underground organisation were to simultaneously eliminate them all in one painful pull on the plaster hiding the worlds wounds. That or just have the human populous be eliminated by the most deadly virus the species has ever known...either way!
What really scares me is that I know that this is a dangerous place to be in. Revolutionaries and dictators rely on the fact that there are people like me around. The ones who need a new hero to lift them out of their ditch. Bearing this in mind, I shall persevere and pray for a better tomorrow, while knowing that tomorrow won't be better, just different.
Why am I suddenly delving into the realms of international politics? Because, I am ashamed to admit, now it affects me. It is a horrible thing when one realises that you are just as bad as all those people who just don't give a crap about Africa because it's not on their doorstep. Well, now it is on my doorstep and I am heartbroken.
I love Africa. I'm not entirely sure why I do (living here probably had something to do with it...), but it occupies a very special place in my heart. For example, I can't help but choke-up when I hear African choirs singing. It's bizarre, but true. And now to see another African country dissolving in the corrosive effects of corruption and loonies, I am truly sad. Not just for the people who may die, be raped, mutilated or forced into service against their will, but for what the whole situation says about Africa. It says, Africa is a place with no hope. If one of the most successful and rich countries on the continent crumbled as easily as Zimbabwe did, just because of one man with syphilis, what hope is there for the rest of them? It sounds horrible, but I am getting to a stage where I have lost all faith in current world leaders and really wouldn't mind if some sort of underground organisation were to simultaneously eliminate them all in one painful pull on the plaster hiding the worlds wounds. That or just have the human populous be eliminated by the most deadly virus the species has ever known...either way!
What really scares me is that I know that this is a dangerous place to be in. Revolutionaries and dictators rely on the fact that there are people like me around. The ones who need a new hero to lift them out of their ditch. Bearing this in mind, I shall persevere and pray for a better tomorrow, while knowing that tomorrow won't be better, just different.
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