Manly

Good day today. I took the ferry to Manly (take a look at this movie of the ferry a few months ago). Jo, David and I went hiking around Shelly beach and then up to the top of the hill. Wonderful views over the ocean and of the many lizards and plants! David and I met up with Kate for dinner at a new Indonesian restaurant in Epping (I have no idea what I ate, but it was delicious) and then Kate and I played some duets.

It's election day here today and I spotted John Howard from my bus this morning as he went off to vote (I assume for himself).

Learning languages

Learning languages is odd! I was trying to remember how to say "How are you?" in Italian (the answer being "come va", or "come stai"?), but could only find phrases in my book like:

"On no account must you be persuaded to give up the cause" (in nessun caso devi ...)
"You are forbidden to contact my children" ("le e proibito ...")
"We cannot accept the view that the lack of research and development explains the decline of Britain" ("non condividiamo affatto l'opinione secondo la quale ...")

Why ?

Lots to do

I've just bought a huge Italian dictionary! Unfortunately, I seem to busy with work stuff to actually do any Italian. I'm going sailing on Sunday!

Interesting hike

Wow - another interesting hike. Dick, Alma, Bill and I went hikeing around the Manly Dam on Sunday. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, but should get some photos from Bill and Dick to add to this blog. The main interest was 1) Dick almost falling over the edge of a waterfall, 2) watching a red-bellied black snake swim around into the pool that I was considering having a swim in and 3) having a rather dramatic encounter with a deadly brown snake. The snake was huge - about 2m long and the width of my arm. Dick was about 1m from it when it reared up and then shot off at great speed (luckily in the opposite direction to us). As Dick said in an email to Maryam: "It's the largest snake I've ever seen in the wild and probably the closest I've ever been to one! They are pretty dangerous - most venomous in Australia".

Reading about these snakes afterwards is quite interesting. Apparently they sometimes chase after people! I also discovered that there is a 4m long python that lives in the Sydney region.

By the way, I've given up on trying to convince Emma to visit me here (or even probably look at my blog again)!

Italian is going well. Io ho fame. I also learnt that the word for "finger" is masculine if it is singular and feminine if it is plural.

Getting on with things

I'm still rather down about M. and cleaning up all her stuff, but lots of good things have also happened recently. I'm just back from a wonderful concert with the Sydney Symphony conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy (THE Vladimir Ashkenazy!) performing Rachmaninov's Vocalise, the 3rd pieno concerto (Garrick Ohlsson on piano who also played a Rachmaninov prelude as an encore) and the symphonic dances. I went with Nicole who kindly drove me back home. She has convinced me to try and learn a piano piece properly - i.e. take months over the piece and slowly work up from one hand at a time etc. I've never learnt a piece like this before - any ideas? I'm torn between a Schubert sonata and some Liszt.

Other good things: tomorrow Kate and I are going out to look for a 'cello bow. I'm going to buy a bow to celebrate getting a PERMANENT RESEARCH POSITION at the ATNF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've just got the documents: I haven't read them in detail, but am being offered an indefinite appointment as follows:

Title: Research Scientist
From: 01 Jan 08
Duration: Indefinite
CSIRO level: --- about 4 steps higher than I'm currently at!!!

Signed by the ATNF director!!!!

This is all conditional on me being granted a permanent residence VISA in Australia. I really hope that all the crazy stuff that has happened with Maryam doesn't cause a problem, but I don't see why it should.

Work is going very well. I've almost finished my tempo2 paper III and Bill and I are working on another paper to study error analysis in pulsar timing. I also have to go down to Canberra in mid-December to talk to some important politicians about our project to make the Parkes telescope operable by high school students.

Lots to do ... (including learning some more Italiano)

How things change ...

Well, I was in a wonderful mood yesterday, but am feeling rather down again today. I went out with Rick and David for an Indian curry - the first Indian curry that I've had since I left Maryam in Manchester. I've now been trying to do some more packing of M's stuff, but I keep getting distracted and looking at her photo album of "M and G in Australia" and "M and G in New Zealand" and "M and G in Canada" ... I 've boxed up to post to her our wedding album and all sorts of other emotional pictures. I don't even have a copy of most of our wedding photos and certainly don't feel like scanning them all in.

I'm going to bed.

Wonderful music

Again some stunning music. Nicole, Kate and I went through some Boccherini string trios before Maureen joined us to work on one of the Beethoven piano quartets.

Wonderful!

Friday the 17th ...

I've just learnt that Friday the 17th is an unlucky day in Italy (whereas the number 13 is considered very lucky)! As you may have guessed, I've just returned from my 5th Italian lesson. It doesn't seem to get much easier. Mi chiamo George, sono inglesi.

I had an incredibly busy weekend. On Saturday evening a group of us went out to Eastwood for a few drinks, a Korean BBQ, followed by some burgers and chips (as a few members of the party - i.e. Rick and Jonathan - were very greedy, and/or burnt all of their food at the BBQ). I discovered on Sunday morning that Jo (an English student doing her PhD in Japan and who can cook a mean Korean BBQ) was excellent on the recorder. So we spent the morning playing recorder duets. Nicole then came around with a HUGE CAKE! It was (and still is) enormous (see photo)!!!!! We played heaps of music again. Later in the afternoon Jonathan and I went out to play some squash (which I lost badly because I had eaten much too much cake).

Tomorrow Nicole, Kate and Maureen are coming around to play some piano quartets.

I never thought ...

... that I'd be playing guitar and violin duets! Again Nicole came around tonight and we got through heaps of different music (including Beethoven's 5th for piano duet and the slow movement of the Elgar 'cello concerto). We finished off by score reading the Schumann 'cello concerto. Nicole, David and I are taking a sailing course in 2 weeks and there is even a possibility that I may be doing some tango dancing (don't laugh!)

I had heaps of meetings at work today. It looks like Rick and I will have to go down to Canberra to meet some important politicians to talk about my project to get high school students to use the Parkes telescope. We also had a meeting with members of the ICT centre who are heavily involved in developing virtual spaces where people can interact etc. (Their main project at the moment is to have robots in iron-ore mines, but the controllers feel as if they are in the mine). They are interested in how their work can be used to give the students a feel that they are actually at the telescope!

Milwaukee

It's almost 2am here. I'm waiting for people in Milwaukee (not Milwauki, mum) to wake up. I've put lots more photos of the 6 foot track on http://picasaweb.google.com/george.b.hobbs/6FootTrack

Enjoy!

Huntsman and rabbits

Sarah doesn't like my pet huntsman spider that is currently living in the spare room. It's about as big as my hand and lives in the top corner of the room. It looks rather impressive! It came wandering into my room this morning and works much better than an alarm clock. At 5am I found myself leaping into the air trying to extract the spider from my hair. This was just as well as I had to finish my talk for the "Science at Parkes" meeting this morning. The talk went well although it turned out to be rather controversial - one pulsar astronomer said that he disagreed with almost everything I said!

Another Italian lesson this evening: We learnt something about a rabbit being -- in/ on/around/ behind/ in front of/ next to -- a box.

Even more photos

Another busy day. Played squash with Jonathan for an hour, had lunch (a healthy lunch!) in the Macquarie centre and then worked on my write-up for the Amaldi conference, talk that I need to give tomorrow on Science with Parkes and produced a newsletter article on the Pulse@Parkes project. I still need to make myself some dinner, finish tidying the house (and boxing up the remainder of Maryam's things - I've now run out of boxes!), do my Italian homework, work through a few guitar pieces and start to learn some of the Liszt piano music that I bought yesterday.

Various photos of our wonderful hike on the 6 foot track are dotted around this post. These photos include (they seem to be coming out in a random order so I won't try to describe each one individually): Albert meeting a red-belly black snake that wasn't going to get off the path for us, a rock-wallaby hiding in the bush and various images of us relaxing at the camp-sites.

Quick update

Sorry, I still haven't copied the other photos of the 6 foot track onto my blog yet. I'll try and get this done tomorrow. On Wednesday night, Joris, Kate, Albert and I went to celebrate our walk by eating at Harry's cafe in Wooloomooloo. This is an interesting place! You buy a pie (in my case a curry pie covered in mashed potatoes, mushy peas and gravy) and sit eating it watching the rats running around the wharf below you.

Tonight I had a guitar lesson with Kate's dad. I can now play some simple melodies.