Monday, May 29, 2006

how to waste an entire day

enter a work photo competition! By the time you "enhance" the photos in photoshop by sliding the wee saturation and hue bars up and down to find the optimum tone and then adjust the contrast and brightness, crop out the crap around the edges and then rotate them slightly to make sure that the horizon is straight, it's time for lunch. After lunch, head down to the pharmacy to get more than you are allowed to enter printed. Then proceed to spend several hours mulling over which ones to put in. ask everyone who walks past for their opinion - sure to be different and not at all helpful in making a decision. Finally decide on the final three but these need a bit more cropping, so go back to step one. Then fill out the entry form which requires some creative writing about how you acutally took the photo and a snazzy title. Then painstakingly stick the photos onto the mounting card, ensuring that they are on straight. Bingo - it's almost time to go home. To fill in those last few minutes, write in your blog about your new found method of procrastination. Brilliant!!

Friday, May 26, 2006

expensive toys

for cheap!!! managed to score myself a $800 sleeping bag for $300!!! yay for the fairydown sale. rated down to -22 degrees which was perhaps of a wee bit of an overkill in my flat last night but it is super cool - check it out

Sunday, May 21, 2006


looking down the valley from up on the glacier

small crevasse
franz josef glacier

an icy challenge

there's nothing like being out in the hills to restore one's soul and hanging off the side of a glacier by the points of your crampons definitely brings about a new lease of life pretty quickly. damn fucking scary is what it is!! it's quite hard to convince your brain that, despite the fact that your feet are on a 45 degree angle on a slick sheet of ice and you are right on the edge of a 200m ice cliff above some enormous boulders, you're not actually going to fall off. fantastic experience!! looking down into a crevasse at that crazy blue ice is just so cool. can't wait to head back over there in a couple of weeks to do it all again.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

bang

an interesting post-script to the bike tyre saga. Managed to scam a ride home, so was changing the tyre in my living room, as you do. Put the new tube in, grabbed my other bike pump and began pumping away, as you do. It was getting kinda hard but the gauge only read 30psi, so I kept on pumping, as you do. And kept on pumping and pumping until ... bang!! The damn thing exploded and almost blew the wall out of my tyre!! Much like jumping on a ballon, only about a million times louder. Good thing I owned more than one tube. Took a little more care the next time round!!

Heading over to Franz Josef glacier tonight with my cousin to play on the glacier for a few days. Something for her masters. Will post lovely west coast pics when i get back :op

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

punctures

for once this morning, I was vaguely organised and managed to get my arse out the door by 8:30 (which, for me, is a minor miracle). Cruising alongside the motorway, the whole pedalling thing started to get quite hard. look down and one dead flat tyre. Now I was a boy scout and, like all good scouts, I know how to be prepared. So i whip the bike upside-down, take off the wheel and remove the tube, replacing it with one that's in my saddle bag. So far, so good. Bust out the bike pump and discover to my horror that the tube has a presta valve which is something my trusty bike pump doesn't want to play with. It's got a thing for schraders. So after mucking about for 10 mins and being laughed at by the men at the tyre shop across the street, i have to pack up my shit and walk my sorry arse to school. Which puts me later to school than i normally am (but at least i had an excuse). The unfortunate thing is that i am now going to have to walk my way back home again and it's frosty out :o(

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

more pics...no post

okay, so i'm being lazy but what ya gonna do

catherdral cove
weird erosion patterns at catherdral cove

Monday, May 08, 2006

the coromandel walkway (before we got to the cows)

how's this for a view from the tent door?!

Friday, May 05, 2006

cave weta in nz's longest walkable tunnel
bridal veil falls ... where i tried (but failed) to badly injure myself

Post #99

Never thought I'd get this far - what with my slackness of posting and all!! But here I am, about to move into the realm of triple digits.

An exciting weekend of paper-reading ahead, although hoping to fit in a bit of geocaching or something to get me outside for a bit. Had a meeting about my research today and the idea of doing a comparitive study on some duck in patagonia was bandied about. How cool would that be!! Wouldn't mind spending six months or so at the bottom of the world!!

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

fun with fireworks

i'm back!!

Actually i've been back for a week but too lazy to post. but then, what's new??

Nice to get away for a while, hangout with some cows and cross a few more north island places off the long list of places to visit. will post pics over the next week or so.

but now it's back to the grind of student life - reading papers and generally just buggering about. yay!!