Midwinter

Yesterday was the shortest day of the year. From now on we'll just get more and more daylight until we over take the northern hemisphere in number of daylight hours sometime around my birthday in the spring.

Tim has been away. He left for a trip for work, then stayed a few extra days to attend his grandfather's funeral. It's a lot quieter without Tim. We'll be happy to have him back.

I don't really have very much to share today, so I'll entertain you with photos from my phone.

The above picture was taken a little over a week ago, to highlight my poor quality phone camera. Jonathan and I were walking through the park on the way to the grocery store, and I noticed that some of the pigeons were looking a little pink. And then I realized they were actually a flock of galah cockatoos. I love the birds here.

And speaking of birds, this picture was taken just three days later. As I was walking to my office from the bus stop, this little guy came down to check out the big poof ball on the plant. This is a rainbow lorikeet, also native.

On Saturday there was a public protest for refugee rights in the city center (central business district). Jonathan and I were trying to take the tram home from skating practice, but the roads were blocked off in the CBD. So we watched the marchers instead.

This one is Jonathan heading toward our home later on Saturday. This is the front entrance to our apartment. I still love living here.

Jonathan and I played trivial pursuit two nights in a row. The first night, Jonathan and I were tied for a long time, before I was able to slip away for the win. The second night, Jonathan didn't have so much luck. But I did! For example, the answer to my question in the "sports and leisure" category (always the topic I answer last) was "the Australian open." Oh yeah. I didn't even have to guess!

Last picture.

I have a lot of pictures like this on my phone. This is one way I save ideas at work. There is an error in the argument on the bottom left, though, so this idea needs more work.


That's all for now.

Upside down seasons

It's kind of fun to have completely inverted seasons.

While others are talking about picnics and sunblock, we're pulling out sweaters and rain jackets. I'm trying to figure out how the timer works on the heater in the living room without resorting to pulling out the user's manual. Somehow I turned the stupid thing off last night, and when I came out at seven, rather than snugly coziness and a rosy gas fire, it was COLD. Dark and empty and COLD.

It's winter -- deep winter here. That means a chill wind blows through the tips of the palm trees in the morning. The leaves of the deciduous trees have all turned yellow and brown, and many of them are actually falling off now, onto the grass that has grown greener with rain. Natives bundle up in black and grey wool, occasionally even a hat and scarf, depending on how well it accessorizes with the rest of the outfit. People whinge a lot about the weather. Here, whinging is the same thing that whining is where I'm from, but you get that extra G for free.

This morning, watching the breeze ripple those palm trees in the early morning sunlight, hearing the tram driver complain about the temperature to a passenger ("it's four degrees outside"), I thought of the neighbor boy who would walk to school with us. The first day in March when the sun came out, and the temperature was above freezing (4 degrees centigrade certainly counts), he would show up in shorts and a T-shirt to walk the three-quarter miles to school. Just because the neighbor was a crazy child doesn't mean I can't continue my whinging.

Now that we are in the deep winter, I can verify that am happy with deep winter here. The winter school holidays are just around the corner. Jonathan was asked if he wants to audition for a holiday performance of the Nutcracker on ice, over the winter week of the 4th of July. All upside down and backwards.

But Nutcracker is fun, and winter is cozy. I got to wear my yellow sweater with the long gray skirt yesterday, for the first time in months. I love that outfit. And it's citrus season, so the oranges are sweet and cheap and tasty. On Saturday, Jonathan and I visited a small local bookstore. We've been reading books and watching movies, cuddled under the blankets in front of the gas heater in the living room. Outside, the wind blows or the fog settles or the raindrops fall, and the lorikeets scream in happiness over the blooming eucalyptus tree outside our window, and the sea gulls fly in from the bay to nibble the grass in the fields in the park, now marked for soccer or Aussie rules football rather than cricket, and all the while the palm trees sway gently in the chill breeze.

Melbourne in June. I love it.

Important things

Lots of important things have been happening here.

The most important thing, I believe, is the yellow tailed black cockatoos. A family of yellow tailed black cockatoos has been visiting the large conifer outside the office window. They've come several times in the last month. We all saw them, and heard them squealing. But Tim has seen them several times. He watched them out his window picking giant pine cones and flying away with them. Tim is very excited about yellow tailed black cockatoos.

Photo from Wikipedia

Another important thing is that Jonathan got a suit. He really wanted a suit for his birthday. So he got a suit. Happy birthday!

Still another important thing is that winter came. By decree, the first of June is the first day of winter here. On this blog, we have been unhappy about winter in the past. But this year, we are going to be very excited about winter. Winter is the time when you get to wear cozy jumpers (sweaters). You get to go to bed early like the sun, and snuggle under the blankets while rain falls gently outside. Winter is snuggly and cuddly, and with temperatures around 15 degrees celsius (about 60 degrees Fahrenheit) every day of winter, we are going to love it and stay very excited about winter. Winter! Where the snuggle comes!

The final important thing is white chocolate Tim Tams. While Tim Tams are important, the white chocolate ones are the most important ones. But you only get seven in a package. That's pretty cheap.

Business travel

One downside of moving down under is that it takes a 14 hour flight plus a 3 hour layover plus a long connecting flight to attend major conferences and events for work, either in Europe or North America. I just got back from such a trip, and I am tired.

What do you do with that 14 hour flight? Well, I know you're supposed to try to sleep, but when it leaves around 9am, you can use it instead to scroll through all the movies available and watch international flicks you wouldn't think of watching otherwise. And you can write the 2nd draft of the talk you are going to give at the conference. And you can revise that paper that you were supposed to revise last week. You can do all this and watch three movies and eat dinner and breakfast and get up to pee about 17 times. You can!

One of the movies I watched on the way out was "Still Alice," about a woman with early onset Alzheimer's disease. I then spent the rest of the trip discovering that I must also have Alzheimer's disease. I have all sorts of symptoms.

(1) I couldn't find words I was looking for. Like "monotreme" to describe egg laying mammals. I just couldn't find it.

(2) After three days of talks at the conference, feeling pretty good about my ability to stay awake and alert so far, a colleague and I were asked in a Skype meeting with England how the conference was going, and what had people spoken about? I drew a complete blank. My colleague, however, began listing speakers and main themes. And I decided I have Alzheimer's disease.

(3) In the middle of another talk, this same colleague, sitting next to me, leaned over and showed me a research paper with a result that was similar to the topic of the talk.

"That looks like a really great result," I whispered. "Whose is it?"

"Uh, yours.... It's from a paper we wrote together."

Oh.

(4) I accidentally left my snugly fleece jacket in my checked luggage. Cold! And then I realized I had somehow neglected to pack the power supply cable for my laptop, after digging through my bag and being unable to find it. Luckily I dug again a few minutes later and found it actually was there, under the water bottle, but that doesn't convince me that I'm not losing my mind.

The highlight of the trip by far was the weekend in Washington DC.

It was actually significantly cheaper to fly from Providence to Washington DC over the weekend and take the train to Philly than to fly direct to Philly and stay in the more expensive hotel. So I spent the weekend visiting my brother, my brother's wife, and their sweet two-year-old.

And crazy of crazy,  the day before I arrived I got a message from said brother letting me know that their second child had been born early. So I also got to meet the newborn.

Here are some pictures I took with my phone. In the first, I didn't really want to be in the picture, but the 2-year-old wanted to see the screen while I took the shot. So it had to be a selfie.

And then he wanted to see Daddy on the screen. So I obliged by taking a fuzzy picture.

It was pouring rain when we went to visit mom and the new baby in the hospital. Fun times.

And here's the new guy.

Also with the other boys in his family.

I didn't take any pictures of my sister-in-law with the phone camera because she was either in the hospital, or sleeping when I was playing with the phone. Because dude, she had just been through childbirth. I did take pictures that included her as well, only I used their camera, not mine, so I have nothing to post here. Sorry.

Anyway, two weeks of work and one fun weekend. And lots and lots of time in airplanes and airports. It is good to be home. I hope I can sleep again sometime soon.

Last primary mothers day

Australia celebrates mothers day in May, just like the US. Yesterday in church we had the usual mothers day events, with primary children coming to the front of the room to sing.

My child was the tallest. That's because he's the oldest. That's because he is aging out of the primary program... today. It was his last time going up to the front to sing.

*Sob*

He complained so bitterly about going up.

"Why do I have to go? It's so embarrassing. I'm too old for it."

But he went. He stood there on the right side, taller than all the other children, and at first he at least tried to mouth the words with everyone else, but by the second verse was just standing there looking uncomfortable.

I did that myself in a primary program when I was his age, and so I empathize with him -- while simultaneously feeling completely justified in sending him up.

I remember his very first time singing in primary on a mothers day, because I wrote about it, back when I was a new blogger. It was a memorable event, with singing and flowers and little boy cuteness: http://familypurcelluk.blogspot.com.au/2008/03/happy-mothers-day.html.
 
That was in 2008, when the little boy was three. And now he has turned from 11 to 12. Eight years is all we get, mothers. Just eight years with the little ones singing in mothers day programs. I know in my head that eight years goes quickly, but the speed of these past eight years boggles my mind. If these eight years have passed so fast, it means the next eight will be even faster, and so on and so on, and I am old. Hunched over and hobbling, with jowls and double chins and deep droopy bags under my eyes. Sitting in a room that smells like urine, but I can't smell it, fussing over my food, wishing that the great-grandchildren would visit, but not for too long because they are wild and might knock over my tacky glass stuff.

Well whatever. I guess I'll take it.

Happy 12, little guy.

Height and weight

One problem with moving countries is that I no longer know how much I weigh, and I don't know how tall I am.

It isn't always true that moving countries causes you to lose track of your height and weight. It only happened to me because I switched to the metric system. I know in my head what the metric system is. I just don't have a good intuitive sense of what any of the measures mean.

That's not completely true. I've figured out by now what temperature feels like in centigrade, and I'm very proud of myself for that accomplishment. Good start, me!

But I really don't have a good sense of what a kilogram is, or how many centimeters wide is a wall. I wanted to hang a new white board in my office. When we measured the wall, I gave a number that was off  by a factor of ten, and the woman helping me laughed. She has a good intuitive sense of what a centimeter means. And then she looked at me in pity. "You don't really know centimeters, do you?"

No, I don't. PhD in mathematics, and can't measure the length of a wall.

In teaching, I used to have this really great example of limits in which the average speed of a bicycle increases and increases as you approach a certain value. But my speed was in miles per hour, and that is meaningless to students here. I had to make up new numbers in kilometers per hour. I hope the numbers I made up were reasonable, in the unreasonable way that made the example funny when I presented it in miles per hour. Humor is different in the metric system.

And recently, I popped a hole in the toe of my good pair of black tights, so it was time to get a new pair. I happened to be in the city centre looking for birthday presents, and saw the wall of tights and remembered to look for myself. But tights are sold by height and weight. Standing there, against the wall, looking at all the numbers on the chart of sizes, I realised that I have no idea how much I weigh, or how tall I am.

They don't sell tights in queen size, or king or jack or ace. The options were tall, extra tall, and medium. I do know that I am rather tall for a woman, so I was pretty sure I should buy tall or extra tall. But which? Ladies on the left of the chart don't need extra tall, the chart said, unless their height is at the very bottom. All ladies on the right of the chart need extra tall, whether their height is at the top or middle or bottom. And those in the middle have to take extra care picking between their sizes.

Since I have no idea where my numbers fit into the chart, I took a wild guess and purchased extra tall.

Just to make sure they fit, I'll wear my five inch platform heals tomorrow so that I definitely fit in the category at the very bottom of the chart, no matter what. Except I still won't know how many centimeters those five inches add.

Maybe I'll ask google what my height is in centimeters, and my weight in kilograms. I've done that before, thinking that next time, I will know for sure. But it doesn't stick in my head, because kilograms and centimeters are still meaningless. I'll just buy extra tall and cross my fingers.

Spelling

I recently submitted an application for a fellowship. The proposal had to be written in Australian English. Which seems to be more similar to English English than to US English. For example, you switch all words ending in ize to end in ise. Except those that are mostly ize, or those that aren't. Organise, recognise, size, wise.

And add extra u's to certain words. Colour, favour, neighbourhood.

I got feedback from an external grant review company on my proposal, and I sure hope the school didn't pay a lot of money for that, because it was pretty worthless. One comment they made was that I needed to be consistent with my spelling. I had to take care not to leave all those American-spelled words hanging around. I didn't realise there were any left. So I ran a search and there was one lone organize left instead of organise, and everything else was Australian.

And meanwhile, after spending a page (out of only eight) describing this really cool 150 year old problem that I was going to investigate, and why it was such an interesting problem, and how it had withstood attempts to solve it for 150 years, and why that mattered, their feedback was, yeah but why is it interesting? Maybe if you explained how it might be applicable to biology it might be interesting. Meanwhile, it's just a blah proposal. I looked up the backgrounds of those on the review company, and yup. They're biologists. No, the ones doing the actual reviewing of the proposals will not be biologists. So their feedback was totally useless.

That has nothing to do with the title of this post, which is spelling.

I have decided to convert all my spelling to Australian, and also my pronunciation of a few key words. Such as the letter Z. In Australia, that is pronounced "zed". I kind of like "zed" over "zee", because "zee" is too close to "see", and sometimes it's confusing as to whether you mean Z or C. No confusion with "zed." So I'm calling it zed. Or I try to. I catch myself saying "zee" all the time. Today, explaining something to a student, I called it "zed" and then "zed" again and then in the middle of a sentence in which I had just called it "zed," I suddenly forgot and called it "zee" all over again.

I'm trying so hard to switch spelling and pronunciation that I have forgotten completely how to spell. Totally inconsistent. I have to stare at a board for a while, then ask my students, wait, did I spell that right? And they all laugh and say no.

Thank goodness it's just a few spelling words here, rather than an entire language. I can only handle one major life change at a time.