Holliday trips

I took a break from university work this week and so did Vishuddhi from his office work. We went around to visit some of South Australia's popular places. Couldn't update the blog everyday since we were tired after each trip so giving a brief description about the holiday now.

Victor Harbor - 26th

Victor harbor is about 80 km from the city. It's a very popular destination for tourists and holiday seekers. We got there around lunch time, and the sea was simply beautiful: it was coral blue in colour and very calm compared to the sea you encounter in Sri Lanka, maybe the sea breeze is not too strong around here.

There we walked through the causeway to a nearby island known as Granite island, which is full of big rocks, alternatively we could have taken the 'horse driven tram' which costs $5 per person, but the walk wasn't long (about 10 minutes) and the scenary was good so we walked.

There really wasn't much to look at on the Granite island, other than rocks, dried-up land & bushes and the surrounding sea. We walked along the walking trail which went all around the island and were really tired at the end of it.

Back on mainland we visited the whale centre, which is a very small old building, with information about "southern right whales". These whales happen to come near the mainland for breeding during the season which is somewhere around August - September. During the earlier years around 1900's, whaling had been frequent, but now with laws in place, thankfully, no such activity takes place here.

Victor harbor is a nice place to relax and enjoy and might not be a bad place to visit for a second time.

Cleland Wild Life Park - 28th

On Thursday we headed towards the Cleland park in the Adelaide Hills, the drive was very brief about 15 kms from where we were and was very easy to locate.

The place was really nice and the people were friendly and so were the animals! Most animals like Kangaroos and Wallabies had been left out to wander freely. They had been so used to humans that when we walk by they would approach us to see whether we have any treats for them! There are packets of animal feed at the reception for $2 a packet, but as the receptionist put it, they get plenty to eat and even if you don't have food you still can touch them.

All the animals are native to Australia, Kangaroos, wallabies, Koalas, Wombats, Dingoes and birds etc.

The Koalas are a very slow moving, lazy looking lot. All they do is eat and sleep. They spent 19 hours a day sleeping! and for the rest of the 5 hours left they munch on Eucalyptus leaves non-stop! They are very soft and cuddly as well.

The dingoes look just like a domestic dog and to my suprise they ate some of the Kangaroo feed which I had with me.

The place was really good, and definitely a place to visit if you are in Adelaide.

Mount Lofty

After Cleland, we went to see Mount Lofty which is located about 1 km ahead. The view from the top of the Lofty summit is supposed to be breathtaking, with a view over the whole of Adelaide extending up to the sea. However, I have to say this wasn't as much as we expected. The view was there, and you could make out the city at a distance, but it's too far and too high. We spent less than half an hour there, nothing to do.

Today we are at home, going for a swim in the afternoon. But there's still more to come in the next few days to come.

The Lights of Lobethal

Last night we were upto visit an event called "The lights of Lobethal", which was advertised rather heavily. It is a christmas event where the residents of Lobethal ( a village area in the Adelaide Hills) would decorate their houses and gardens with lights.

After about a 30km drive through the winding and scenic hills, we arrived in Lobethal rather ahead of time for the christmas pageant. Lobethal is a somewhat country area with an agricultural life-style.

The pageant and the lights came in as a bit of a dissapointment. The pageant consisted of a few old cars and a couple of bag-pipe bands, and abruptly came to an end with the not-so grand arrival of Santa Clause.

Next we took our car across the light trail, which was not too bad, however the heavy and stagnant traffic through the roads took away the pleasure of the light displays.

All in all the experience of the country side further away from the city was a pleasent one; relaxing and beautiful.

Unexpected lunch

The school of chemistry and physics had a x'mas dinner party last evening. Even though Vishuddhi insisted that I stay, I felt bad about him staying in the library till I finish up, so I decided not to stay. The party was only for the school students and staff so family members were not allowed. Anyway, this morning it turned out that there were a lot of food left over from that party. So we all got a mail from the front office with an invitation to 'dig-in' during lunch.

So I also helped myself, inspite of the fact that I brought lunch from home, oh well, that can wait. and the food was delicious!!! wow! it was really amazing! and it's not very frequently that you get to have a good meal without the hassle of having to cook and wash-up after! so that was good!

Well, cooking is fun, but not always. Specially when the thing that you are cooking doesn't turn up the way you want it to or when you have to do it in a rush (early morning before leaving home) or when you have to do it after coming home from work. But if I'm at home with plenty of time to spare, I just love to try out recipes.

Back home in Sri Lanka I used to try out a lot of dessert recipes. Even if my pudding turned out to be something close to a cake, it never went to waste, there were enough and more people who were willing to give a helping mouth! (specially my brother and father!) So I could try out anything and get away with it. No complaints! But here, it's only me and my husband, if something goes wrong we have to gulp it down somehow, not very pleasant, and anyway no time for all that.

Research!

I was hoping to continue this blogging work frequently as I can, but I guess I missed out on a whole week after my first blog, well, at least I'm trying.

It's not easy to sit in front of the computer and type while I'm in University. It makes it look like I'm fooling around and not getting any work done! on the other hand when I get home I'm too tired and got the household work to take care of like cooking and cleaning up after. So then again no time. So maybe I should just try to squeeze in a few minutes of "blogging" into my research time table from now on.

I'm waiting for my lab to be set up to start my experiments, but it seems that it's not going to come along as fast as I hoped it would. My supervisor and the lab warden seems to be having different opinions about the setting up of the optical table for my work. Well, basically the problem is a new optical table (which is a special kind of table made out of steel and mounted on legs which isolate the table top from the ground vibrations) is fairly large. And once put up, it will be too high for me to reach out over the table to work on, since I'm not really the tallest person around here. So as a solution the lab warden wants to cut down the legs and make it shorter (which is not going to be easy, but would be the best solution) but my supervisor wants to put up some platform for me to stand on (hmm.... I'm not really sure how he is hoping to do that) so it seems that the setting up of the lab is going to take some time.

It's funny how things come up when u want to do something. You think that, ok I'm going to do this, should be fairly straight forward and should be able to finish it by tomorrow, but when u actually get down to doing it, there's always something in the way! so once u get around that problem and get around the next problem and so on, your time estimate seems pointless! One could account for the unexpected problems in setting up a time frame, but in doing research it seems that the time allowance for unexpected happenings are much much higher than the actual work time. (No wonder I keep hearing loud groans from the other labs every now and then)

well, least I could do is prepare for the work that I have to do once the lab is set up. So these days I'm studying the methods and techniques needed to do the experiments, so once the lab is done, I can spend more time doing the experiments and less time trying to figure out how to do them.

My first blog

Blogging seems to be a great way to get your site up on the internet without actually having to do the tedious coding which is required for a web site. It is also partly an alternative to keeping a diary, (although everyone can read it) you can always refer back to a date you want to recall. It can also be a good way to exchange ideas and knowledge with others, a virtual conversation.

I've been wanting to create a blog since my husband first talked about it, but never really took the time. But when he created a blog for himself, I also wanted one and that's how this blogspot came into existence!