On the Bottom Half

Ho Hum A Reader's Bum

The first week of phd candidature has nearly rolled to a close and I find myself with sore eyes and a flatter bum. My computer, ordered and paid for by Monash and my very generous supervisor hasn't arrived yet, but I'm assured that it should be here next week or the week after; maybe the week after that. It's going to be a MacBook Pro 17" (upgraded to 2.16 GHz Core Duo, 120 GB hard drive, and 2 GB of ram). I know, I know - it's a Mac... My supervisor uses one though, so for me to stay true to my PC roots, he'd need to buy the most expensive bits of software new to go into a PC. I thought I'd 'compromise', get a really powerful (but not yet proven) Mac, and emulate any PC stuff on VirtualPC or Boot Camp - both are Apple programs that allow Windows XP to run on a Mac.

The jury's out for a little while...

The highlight of the week had to be Lakme, an opera put on by Opera Australia. If you go one hour before the performance, you can get student rush tickets that are $37 for A Reserve, which have a normal price of $140! It was transcendant! Some songs gave you goose bumps, they were so pretty. I'd reccommend it, but I think you have to have a desire to go first, then you can accept someone's encouragement. There's reading involved, though, if it's sung in anything but english. However, they're called 'surtitles' instead of 'subtitles' - they appear on a board above the stage.

The adventure of the night was losing my ticket. I put it in the front cover of the program and it slipped out at some point minutes before curtain... Of course. I rushed around looking lost and concerned and confused, then went to the box office and they said that my ticket had been returned to the Supervisor's Office. I found an usher, waited while she sorted through hundreds of last minute arrivees, got my ticket and shot through the door with minutes to spare! Cool. I felt kind of silly in the dressed up crowd with my nice black dress pants, black short sleeved dress shirt and Merrell hiking shoes, but the tickets are for 'poor', underfunded students, right? Now about that refresher flight next week...

Anyway, it's just school like it's always been, except for the lack of classes. I've already been asked to 'demonstrate' in a first year lab. Apparently most grad students do those kinds of things - the extra cash can only help my flying. Ah well, I'm treating it like a contract job and that seems the best way to fit it into the 'life-arc' that I'm desperately trying to figure out. I've contacted the Aussie Defence Force about flying here and there's real anecdotal evidence that you can have unperfect vision, yet still be allowed to fly. More on that as it happens.

My cereal has taken an interesting swing - they have this wonderful granola stuff here that resembles some granola we got during the solar car race from the Whole Foods Market stores in the U.S: Vanilla Almond Granola Clusters. The Aussie stuff may be made by a company called 'Sanitarium', but if it tastes anything like what we had in Texas - it'll be the sex of breakfast cereals. I have to wait until I get through the open stuff first, though. More on that later.

Well how about that, I go from pictures of an alpine landscape in central Tasmania to discussing qualities of breakfast cereals, all in one blog! Life takes interesting turns.

R-man: by the way, I just got your card in the mailbox this morning on my way to work! Thanks buddy - it really made my day!

posted by Kyle @ 17:18