Thoughts on China

(Note: Yes, I know it was nearly 4 months ago. I've been pondering the experience until now. These things take time!)

China had never been on my list of top places to visit, but a confluence of circumstances led us to make a trip there in early September.

Some things I saw:

1. Chinese people. There really are a lot of them. Including some very, very cute Chinese children, although some of the boy babies have very bad haircuts, like this:

Credit: www.weirdasianews.com

2. Temples. There are a lot of them, too. 

Outer gate, Nanputuo Temple, Xiamen, Fujian Province

Interior temple at Nanputuo

Temple at Sunlight Rock, Gulangyu Island, Xiamen

Main gate, Yuantong Temple, Kunming, Yunnan Province

Interior temple at Yuantong

3. Signs and labels with amusing English translations.

'Warning slip' (i.e. 'slippery when wet') at Gulangyu ferry dock

'Skin doing device' (what we would call 'hair dryer') in hotel room

4. Breathtaking disregard for safety.

5. Lovely old architecture, and horrible new architecture.

A traditional tulou, Fujian province, southern China

A planned community under construction far outside Xiamen, in the 'horrible new' category.

Victorian-era structure on Gulangyu Island, Xiamen, Fujian province

6. Walmart. When you think about it, it makes sense since the crap they sell is all made in China anyway.

7. T-shirts with, um, somewhat inappropriate English phrases in large letters on the front. I don't have photos of these because I was too distracted by my thoughts on why these shirts exist and why people would wear them, but two have stuck in my mind, both worn by young women: (1) "Eat shit and die" (2) "I'm not easy but we can discuss it"

Then there are things I smelled in China; at the time there were three, but at this remove I can only remember two: diesel fumes, and sewer.

Best things about the trip:

1. Leaving Xiamen and going to Kunming. It was September, and Xiamen was too hot and humid.

2. Amazingly good and cheap food. Iced tea and wifi at Starbucks.

3. Brian. No way would I do China without someone who can communicate in Mandarin.

4. Stone Forest in Yunnan. Other-worldly and weirdly beautiful.

Worst things:

1. Toilets.

A luxury squatter - at least it was clean (and luckily there was a sitter in the next stall)

2. A plague of scooters.

Scooters waiting at a light

Now these scooters are electric, which means they are silent and can sneak up on you. Almost no public space is off limits to them, including sidewalks, the one place pedestrians like to think they're safe. And they don't always follow the flow of traffic, so they can come at you from any direction. On the other hand, I never saw any actual accidents. According to Brian, an accident would be a bureaucratic nightmare for the driver, and even more so if the aggrieved party was a foreigner.

3. The beds. It's of course impossible to convey in a photo just how hard the mattresses are, if they are indeed mattresses and not concrete blocks, which is sort of what they feel like. I like sleeping on a firm surface as much as anyone, but these things go way beyond firm, at least in the tourist-class hotels we stayed in. 

In our 10 days there we could only get the barest taste of the country. The experience was intriguing and definitely worthwhile. Would I go back? Well...maybe. 

China, part 1: Hong Kong

I probably should have written about China a couple of months ago, when it was all fresh in my mind. I think that's the way it's supposed to be done. Oh well.

We started off in Hong Kong for a few days, and we also stayed one night there on the way home. At the start, being in Hong Kong was pretty much like traveling anywhere else. Yes, there were a lot of Chinese people, signs in Chinese, etc. But English is everywhere, reflecting the British colonial past, so as an English speaker you have no problem getting around. And getting around is easy on the fabulous, frequent, air-conditioned metro system; then, if you have to go farther than it does, there are buses and cool old double decker trams, or ferries if your destination is the mainland or one of the other islands. 

Harbor and business district, with Kowloon in the distance, from  the Peak

Hong Kong is built around the periphery of a mountainous island, as well as into the side of the mountain. On the north side, at and within a couple hundred meters of the shoreline, is the commercial district with office buildings, shopping malls, hotels, and some giant apartment blocks. Here there are mobs of people going everywhere all the time. This is what most people probably think of when they think of Hong Kong. 

Night market in Kowloon

Away from this strip is where people live and some people work: shops, street markets, restaurants, and dwellings of various sizes. 

Phil and Nick on Dragon's Back track

But there are also large swaths of greenery where nothing has been built, and you can walk on a hiking track for a couple of hours in a park and hardly see anyone except for the people you're hiking with.

photo credit: Wing Luk

Much of yuppie Hong Kong lives in an area called the Mid-levels, a neighbourhood just above the central business district, partway up the mountain. Between the steep angle of the walkways that lead up to the Mid-levels and the heat and humidity much of the year, getting home after work would be quite a chore, driving being a nightmare. The brilliant solution is the Mid-levels Escalator, the world's longest covered outdoor escalator according to Wikipedia. In the morning, until about 10, the escalator   moves people down from the heights to the business district, accommodating the direction of rush hour. Then it switches over to move people uphill for the rest of the day and into the evening. There are covered stairs for when you're going the opposite direction of the escalator, as seen on the right of the photo.

Sok Kwu Wan village fishing fleet, from the track

We passed through lively fishing villages offering all kinds of fish that you wouldn't necessarily want to eat, especially considering the apparent lack of refrigeration. This one was at the start of a couple hours' walk from one side of Lamma island to the other.

Our days were full of walking and our nights included dinner, more walking, and visiting the Ben and Jerry's scoop shops. Our hotel in the early part of the trip was clean, quiet, and convenient, but hardly luxurious; the room had just enough room for a queen bed, a very tight desk and closet area, and a small bathroom. On our last night, returning home the next day to Oz, we splurged on THIS room. My phone camera doesn't do it justice, but this is the bed as seen from the lounge area (note the complimentary fruit bowl), with the glass-enclosed bathroom (separate shower and tub!) off to the left of the photo. Also not shown is the rooftop pool and the VIP breakfast/tea lounge just down the hall. This is where I want to stay next time.

The new Dr. Long

It has happened at last! Today in my email:

The gown

"Dear Maryann

Congratulations on fulfilling all requirements to be awarded your Doctor/Master of Philosophy degree. Your conferral date is 27/11/2012 (this being the date that your award was signed off by the Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor)."

There was more, about tickets to graduation and ordering academic attire and such. Right away I emailed back to make sure they knew it was a Doctor, not Master, of Philosophy. How embarrassing would that be at graduation, for them to call my name and the wrong degree?

My diploma is on its way to me, and, dear Readers, I will dress up and walk across the stage in the ceremony beginning at 11pm EST (US) on 10 December at the UQ School of Nursing and Midwifery graduation, along with many of my students from my year of teaching in 2009. If you're awake then, imagine me wearing this. Unfortunately, red is the PhD colour here. The hat is too silly to show you. Hope it looks better on me.

 Actual photos will follow in due course. And, family and friends who offered me advice, suggestions or a sympathetic ear while I kvetched over the past 3 1/2 years, and you know who you are -- thank you!

Waiting for The Word...

So, we already know I submitted my thesis on 31 August.  A few weeks ago I was able to see online that it was sent out for examination on 11 September (bad luck??) and the thesis examiners' reports were due back on 30 October.  I was doing fine not looking to see the status until tonight, when I got the notion to look and see what was up.

Sure enough, I found that both reports are in...one was back on the 28th of September (only 17 days!! is that a fat envelope or a thin envelope?) and the other one just came in on 12 October.

I know from others who've been through it that it takes a few days before the graduate school contacts you to tell your fate.  So now I have to try not to think about it even though I know - -The Word will be coming soon.  

Will it be: "congratulations, awesome thesis"? or "you've got a little work to do here"? or "you've got a lot of work to do here"? or - PLEASE NO NO NO "you're kidding, right?"

Being (sort of) done

Six weeks ago tomorrow, I submitted my PhD thesis.  I sat at my laptop in Venerina's office and typed in the necessary information and uploaded the pdf - that's how it's done here at UQ, it's all electronic.  After it was all submitted, we went to lunch to celebrate, without Fiona who was down with a cold.  The thesis went into the library's electronic repository, called "eSpace."  A few days later, the Graduate School emailed me to tell me they had sent it out to the two examiners, whose job it is (and a thankless one at that) to read it, comment and judge whether it meets the standard necessary for a PhD.  The examiners' reports are due in around the end of October, which is about 3 weeks from now. So for the moment I'm in a kind of PhD waiting room, I guess you might say.

What have I been doing in the meantime?

The first thing I did was have a couple weeks of holiday in China with Phil and Brian.  That will be the subject of at least one post coming up.  I just today got around to transferring those photos from my phone to my laptop.  This doesn't usually take me as long, but I just wasn't motivated.  I reckon this rainy cool day was what I needed to get going.

While we were away, I got word that the paper of study 2 as revised over the winter had been accepted.  Yesterday, I got the proofs and corrected them. Found one typo of mine that I hadn't seen before but also some that were added by the - typesetter? editor? Funny, you work so hard to make the manuscript perfect and then they mess it up for you!  It's supposed to be available online 48 hours after they get the corrections so that would be tomorrow sometime.  

A week or so after our return I heard from another journal where I had the study 3 manuscript waiting for a decision that it had been accepted!  With that acceptance, 4 of the 5 papers that form the backbone of my thesis are or will be published.  I can live with that.

I thought I would be energised with all this fun and success, but I'm having a hard time focusing.  I've gone back to my data set, with at least a couple more studies in mind, but for some reason the data management is overwhelming me.  So many questions come up: who is a midwife here? should I use the whole data set or just the practising midwives? Should I exclude people who are pregnant? who have arthritis?  Look at all symptoms or just work-related symptoms? Focus on lifestyle factors or work factors? 

So when I'm not wrestling with data, how do I spend my days?  Catching up with TV shows in the morning (having recorded them overnight) is my guilty pleasure.  I'm doing more cooking - not because I particularly want to - never that! - more because I don't have the excuse of a thesis to finish, and since my stipend ended I don't feel right about doing takeaway 3 nights a week.  Gym, or walking, I try to do one of them almost every day. Facebook, that bloody time sink. (Just a second while I check my news feed...)

I had a list of things to do that I put off while I was finishing the thesis.  Some of them - a few - are done.  I finished my CMP requirements for the year, installed Stata v. 12, and got a mammogram.  (It was normal, thanks for asking.) Surprisingly to me I haven't really felt like doing much with the quilt I started working on a couple of months ago.  Still on the to-do list are follow-up with the dermatologist, learn Prezi, get my bike fixed, continue the work I started on BOR procedures, and organise the Oz taxes for last year.  You can bet that job's not calling to me.

How would I like to be spending my days? I'd like to find something to do part time for money.  Best would be as a researcher in some exercise physiology lab so I could learn more about the toys they use to measure work activities.  I've looked around locally but not found anything like that.  I do have a CPD idea for a women's health course for midwives, yeah, okay, and nurse practitioners too. I feel like my head isn't quite there yet for constructing such a thing.  But now that I've started thinking about it, I just may start on an outline later.

I'm speaking to the midwives in our area in 2 weeks about my research, so pretty soon I've got to put some slides together for that event.  Soon afterwards, I should be hearing from my thesis examiners.  I'm told that the usual outcome is "minor corrections" and I hope there won't be more to do than that.  Once the corrections are approved, I leave the PhD waiting room and move on to my still-mysterious next thing.

End of the road

I never thought today would come.  No, that's not quite true.  It's more like I've had a hard time imagining today would come, and when it did, what it would be like.  What I would be like.  The last time I had a professional milestone, I guess you could call it, was four years and one day ago.  August 29, 2008.  That was the day I resigned my position at Mount Auburn and turned in the pager (do they still use pagers? must ask) I had kept on me almost 24/7 for the previous 3 years and never too far away for 4 years before that.  And let me tell you: that was HUGE.  Coincidentally, it was my birthday, and Phil and I went out to dinner, and I drank way too much and copped it the next day with a massive migraine, but never mind that.  

The point is, it's happening again.  Today, with the help of a cast of thousands - this is almost literally true - and after 3 1/2 years of work, I finished my PhD thesis.  Tomorrow it goes into the university electronic repository, 'eSpace,' there to await the pleasure and, soon, I hope, endure the scrutiny of two thesis examiners.  I'm sorry to say that unless you are a UQ student or staff member, you won't be able to read it unless you want me to send you the PDF. Sometime during the spring (or fall, if you are reading this above the Equator), I'll get it back with the examiners' comments, corrections, revisions required.  If these are not too radical, I'll make the necessary changes, submit it again for approval, and if, no, WHEN granted, I will immediately be awarded the PhD.  But the majority of the work is done, and so I consider today the milestone.

So: last time I made a big change, I knew what was coming next.  This time, I have no idea, and yet, strangely for me, I am unperturbed by the not-knowing.  Here's what I do know.  Now that I've arrived at the end of this road, I will: maintain this blog in a healthier state; work on quilts; plan and carry out my next few research projects; get at least two of my three unpublished manuscripts published; perhaps find some paid work to do; get my bike working again; explore Brisbane some more.  And see what happens.

The Aussie alphabet: L is for larrikin

So, Wikipedia says larrikin refers to a "mischievous or frolicsome youth" and larrikinism an "Australian folk tradition of irreverence, mockery of authority and disregard for rigid norms of propriety."  The Ur-larrikin was, of course, Ned Kelly, although I think there's a pretty big gap between irreverence and shooting police, which is the most serious crime of which he was accused.  He usually expressed his larrikinism by committing robberies, cattle rustling, the sort of thing that today might be referred to as hooning.


L also stands for a couple of other Oz specialties:

Lantana.  It's pretty, right?

1) Lantana.  A movie with Italian-Australian actor Anthony LaPaglia.  Also, and more annoyingly, a ubiquitous and noxious and invasive weed that grows everywhere around here.  My thought: "But it's so pretty!"  See for yourself.


2) Lunch, Sunday.  It's not that all they do here is eat.  But let's face it, sharing a meal with friends is one of the joys of life, and Aussies take a back seat to no one in that department. Besides morning tea and of course the barbeque, another mealtime custom is Sunday lunch.  It seems to be one of the Brit customs that has survived the colonial period.  Not unlike the Sunday dinners of my childhood, except that it's not preceded by church-going, and it doesn't always feature a big piece of dead animal, at least not among people with whom I've shared it.  Wikipedia says it's aka Sunday roast - but dead animals are optional.  The important ingredients are food and friends, and perhaps a nice bottle or two of wine.  Lovely way to spend a Sunday arvo - that's "afternoon" for those of you who don't know Strine.

The Aussie alphabet: K is for kookaburra

I've been trying to avoid using animals in this compilation because it's, or they are, such a cliché here. And of course there are some obvious candidates, you know the ones; the macropod and the somnolent eucalyptus eater. But I hardly have any contact with those two, whereas right outside our house somewhere, we have a kookaburra who "sings" for us - screeches, more like - most mornings and afternoons. And this is how it sounds. Loud. Mighty loud at 5 am.

Here's a nice photo of a blue-winged kookaburra.

You know, of course, about the Great Copyright Fight. In case you don't, it started with this song, and the melody sounds like this. Then, in 1981, an Aussie band Men at Work made the charts with a song called "Down Under"; of course you've heard it...it had an instrumental bridge that sounded a lot like the main melody of the original song from 50 years earlier. The copyright owner sued the band for royalties and won, but only back to 2002.

Apparently the original has now been modified to eliminate the use of the word "gay" in its erstwhile meaning of "happy" in order not to cause the children of today to ROFLTAO.

Life as a study subject

Because I sort of feel that karma requires me to participate in other people's studies so that people will participate in mine, I recently signed up for a study of physical activity in older women, older being defined as 50+. It's part of an Oz breast cancer study looking at risk factors and this one is specifically trying to determine which of 3 electronic activity monitoring devices is best for recording physical activity. I enrolled in mid-January and was selected for the two-week full-on sub-sample.

At the enrollment visit, I had my height, weight and body fat % measured and drank a small amount of isotope-labeled water. The degradation of the isotope over time is the standard against which the output of the monitors is compared. Every day I peed in a cup, and plotting the declining quantity of the isotope in each day's sample generated a curve that described my metabolic rate. I also kept a daily diary of activity.

The monitors were: 1) an accelerometer in a small red plastic case, attached to a black elastic waistband, that sits on my right hip (photo on right); 2) a grey armband with a small plastic device that records galvanic skin response, i.e. sweating, Velcro'd on my right upper arm (also on right); and 3) the most recognisably medical thingie, a double-ended black affair with two electrode attachments, one to monitor my ECG and the other another accelerometer (in situ, photo left). I was allowed to remove #s 1 and 2 for showering, swimming and sleeping. #3 stayed on all the time except once in the middle of the week I had to change the electrodes. This was accomplished by peeling the old ones off, washing the spots, roughing up the skin a bit with emery paper, then wiping with alcohol (ouch! that stung!) for optimal adherence and then reapplying new ones.

So how were these monitors? #1 overall wasn't bad. It was comfortable to wear, and relatively nonintrusive. Its worst characteristic was probably the excess elastic that hung down in the front from my waist. When I went back for my mid-trial visit, the research assistant gave me a clip for it and that was much better. #2 was a bit more confronting as I noticed it when I moved my arm, and it created a muffin top of arm fat/skin above it that wasn't that nice to look at. On the plus side, it played a happy little electronic tune every time I took it off or put it on again. #3 was the secret monitor, not visible externally at all unless I were to wear a bikini (and that didn't happen so no worries there). Its downside was a slight degree of skin irritation, ranging from barely noticeable to somewhat obnoxious, just from it being there all the time.

At mid-trial I brought in my week's worth of pee samples and my activity log and the research assistant downloaded information from the 3 monitors, gave them back to me with another 7 specimen cups and a new activity log and sent me off for the final week. Oh, and I got results of the body fat % testing. 28.3%. When the data were all in, I got results from analysis of the falling isotope levels, which confirmed my suspicion that my postmenopausal metabolic rate is somewhere in the snail range.

Hooray for science!

Bump 2.0 - Menopause Edition, or how to procrastinate and still feel you accomplished something

After the afternoon deluge, the clouds lifted a bit, the weather radar had no bad news, and it was still light enough out to go for a run. Or, to be more accurate, a trot. The big questions of the day to be answered were:

1) Can I still run there you go again, damn it, trot! 3 miles without stopping?
2) Do the mosquitoes of SE Qld prefer to bite skin that is sweaty or just moist from humidity?
3) Will the addition of kinesophobia and passive coping variables improve the R^2 ("R-squared") of my linear regression model?

I know, I know. This post is supposed to be about Bump 2.0. I'll leave off digressing and get on with it.

As with labor and birth and parenthood, so menopause. You can read all the books, spend hours at websites, talk to your friends, and go to classes all you want, but nothing can really prepare you for what happens to your body after menopause.

Here is one of the things that happens. One day you look down, and where what you thought was your more or less flat belly used to be, there is now a Bump. Bump 2.0, and not the pregnancy one - that's Bump 1.0. Contract your abs, and the Bump moves with them, but it is still there. Your weight has not changed, but it's apparent that the distribution of said weight, somehow, has.

Since we know there is no such thing as "spot" weight reduction, logic dictates that the only way to deal with Bump 2.0 is a program of "overall" weight reduction. Now for you young women, I'm sorry to say there's more bad news. In addition to bringing you Bump 2.0, menopause plays another cruel trick: your metabolism slows to slightly above Sloth level, and - here's the best part - with no corresponding reduction in appetite! As you might imagine, this makes overall weight reduction a mirage of a goal: you can see it in the distance, but you never actually get there.

Being an HRT* refusenik, I am unable to tell you whether the appearance of Bump 2.0 would have been delayed or prevented had I chosen to maintain my youthful hormone levels through chemistry. If anyone has any pertinent evidence, I'd be interested in knowing about it, although not interested enough to give up refusenik status.

It occurs to me that Bump 2.0 - Menopause Edition would be a good title for a zine or a blog. I'm happy to lend it to anyone who wants to start such a publication, as long as I'm properly credited, of course.

And now the answers to today's big questions:

1) YES!!!! Slow, but I can still do it. The hardest bit, besides all of it, is when I'm downwind of the poo bins.
2) Didn't get any bites in either direction, so research continues.
3) Still to be determined when procrastination time is over.

*hormone replacement therapy, which in the 90s was a really really good thing, and now we know better.

The Aussie alphabet: J is for Jewish

Who's Jewish in Australia? That can be a tough one to sort out, when the big machers have last names like Pratt. For real. But, turns out his last name was Przecicki until his family moved from Poland to Oz in 1938, and anyway he lived in Melbourne which is definitively not Brisbane.

Melbourne is where the bagels I get in Coles come from. Melbourne is the home of the country's largest Jewish community, as a result of the mid-19th-century Victorian gold rush. It has whole neighbourhoods - sorry, suburbs - that are Jewish in flavour, mostly in the southeast. I've even visited one, Toorak, looking for a good bagel bakery with fresh, not-in-a-plastic-bag-in-Coles bagels. Found bagels - not that good - but walking around I felt like I was back on Avenue J in Brooklyn.

Wikipedia says there were at least 15 Jews who arrived with the First Fleet in 1788. The mishpocheh grew slowly until the gold rush, which saw a big increase. The Jewish population more than doubled between 1933 and 1955, as Oz set no limits on Jewish immigration (hey, they were white, so it was all good!).

Looking for more prominent Aussie Jews, I find Sidney Myer of the department store - yawn, although interestingly he converted in 1920, and Frank Lowy, of Westfield shopping centres fame. Nice to know that every time I spend money in the Temple of Consumerism, aka Indooroopilly Shopping Centre, I'm helping keep Frank near the top of the Rich List. Then Wikipedia surprises me by revealing that John Monash, war hero, honoured with an eponymous university, was a Yid! And as if that weren't enough, so is Zelman Cowen. Zel was the VC at UQ during the Vietnam War and has a building named after him. (I should add that I've wondered whether, with a name like Zelman, that Cowen wasn't a misspelling of Cohen.) Zel was also - shocker - Governor-General from 1977-1982. For those of you who don't know, the GG is the Queen's official representative in Oz, effectively the stunt Queen. And Zel wasn't even the first Jewish GG: nope, that was Isaac Isaacs in the 1930s, who was also the first Australian-born GG.

As for Brisbane, the Jewish population here is estimated at 1800 and change. More idle Googling reveals that there are two orthodox synagogues in Brisbane, one in the CBD (where almost nobody actually lives, so it must be like the one on 47th St in NYC, mostly for the weekday morning minyan) and one in Greenslopes, south of the CBD. There's also Beit Knesset, in Camp Hill, an eastern suburb, that's described as "Progressive." Oddly, the next Google listing after Beit Knesset is Langri Tangpa Buddhist Centre, so guess Google thinks Progressive Judaism is just Buddhism with knaidlach.

And all this Googling has uncovered a nearby source for frozen challah, and bagels that might be better than the ones in Coles: a deli in West End. I may just have to go there tomorrow. But tomorrow is Saturday...will they be open?

South Africa

It is COLD here! and by "here" I mean Brisbane. I'm coping by sitting about a metre away from my blazing woodstove and eagerly anticipating my temporary respite from winter that begins in a few days. Meanwhile: South Africa.

First I will say that I liked Cape Town, sort of. It's hard for me to truly like a place where I'm warned away from public transport for safety reasons (the Lonely Planet guide calls it "informal redistribution of wealth" - I'll take the formal kind, thanks) and also from walking even short distances after dark. We had unexpectedly mild, sunny weather for the weekend of our brief visit. Really liked the place we stayed. Visited a colony of African penguins and the Cape of Good Hope, beloved of mariners past if not present also.

Next I will say that Phinda Private Game Reserve rocks. They know all about service and the food was excellent and nearly non-stop. The animal viewing was superb. See photos. We stayed at Rock Lodge and enjoyed the services of Sibu, a fantastic guide and intrepid 4WD driver.

After Phinda, the balance of the trip was slightly disappointing. Montusi in the Drakensberg Mtns - okay, just okay, even given we were aware of having been entirely spoiled by Phinda. Good hike though, which we were sorely in need of after 3 days of 4WDing and eating.

Durban: as with Cape Town, don't go out alone but here it was don't do it even in the daytime. Too bad, because it has a big harbour that might have been a good running destination - we saw what we could at dinner by the water one night. Taxis to dinner and back if we went out.

The Hilton: well, it was close to the convention centre. First room they gave us was on the 7th floor but twin beds. We said no, and ended up on the 3rd floor with the view of the car park. Internet was wired and barely usable, and expensive. Charged for the telephone support call. This is a business hotel!! Restaurant: plenty of waitstaff (they call them "waitrons" there) but a struggle to get anyone's attention beyond seating you. Lots of "yes sirs" and inquiries about your wishes and then when you tell them, "right away sir" and they disappear for 20 minutes. The Veneer of Service, I have christened it. In contrast to Oz where there is no service to speak of and thus you neither expect it nor have to tip for it, in SA they make it look like they offer service when really they don't, and they still expect the tip. Our room cleaner left dirty drinking glasses on the sideboard for two days until I happened to be there when she arrived and pointed it out to her. She seemed surprised that it mattered. "Fitness centre" had broken equipment and not enough space for it.

ICM: quite an experience to be there with midwives from all over the world. Must say getting to the food tables in the exhibit hall was even harder with this crowd than at ACNM. They practically knocked you over to get there and if your pre-prandial session ran a bit late, forget it; you might just as well wait a half-hour or so and try again after the feeding frenzy died down a bit. I was happy to get my talk over with early on and enjoy the rest of the conference.

Would I go back? To Cape Town, big maybe. To Phinda, maybe after I've seen some of the places on my list that I haven't been to at all yet. To ICM? I could see doing that. Prague 2014 sounds good...

The Aussie alphabet: I is for indigenous

Does any country get indigenous right? We know what happened in the young United States, where treaty after treaty was broken by the European invaders. Later, Native American children were removed from their families and sent to White schools, and the legacy of alcoholism, substance abuse, poor perinatal outcomes, chronic disease and premature death, not to mention poverty and hopelessness, is passed on from one generation to the next.

And here in Oz? Same story. Aboriginal Australians have all the same problems. Successive governments seem to either ignore them (Liberal-National) and hope they'll just go away, or make a lot of noise about doing something about them without, in the end, making much of a difference (Labor).

My guitar god bucket list

I have a short list of really really amazing rock guitarists I want to see perform live, some of whom I have already seen, and some yet to come. Here's the current list (as much as I can remember at the moment) in no particular order.

Eric Clapton (seen)
Jeff Beck (seen)
Jerry Garcia (seen several times)
Carlos Santana (seeing him 24 March 2011!!)
Mark Knopfler (yet to be scheduled)
Jorma Kaukonen (yet to be scheduled)

Highs and lows of postgrad year 2

One of my tasks over the summer/holiday break is to put down some thoughts on my progress so far. What have I accomplished? What do I understand better now than I did a year ago? What disappointments have I had, and what triumphs? Where do I need to focus my efforts in the coming year?

Without a doubt the high point of the year was receiving word that the abstract I submitted for a presentation at next year's ICM meeting was accepted. Having sent it off in the winter with no expectations at all, I think the word "gob-smacked" is a pretty accurate description of how I felt reading the notification email. I haven't yet begun to think about what exactly I will present; for one thing, I don't know how much time I'll be allotted so it's a bit premature anyway. For now, just knowing I have it to look forward to is enough.

In that same vein, a second abstract I sent in for the ACNM annual meeting was also accepted, again to my surprise and pleasure. I dithered awhile over whether to try to do both, but I'm confident I made the right decision to postpone an American presentation until I know more about my topic and can tailor a talk better for an American midwifery audience. It is gratifying to know that someone looked at my abstract and thought, "hmm...maybe this is important for us to hear about..."

My confirmation of candidature in April was all-consuming and nerve-wracking. In retrospect I probably stressed over it more than absolutely necessary, but like giving birth for the first time, I had no real idea what to expect. I had lots of good advice, help, encouragement and support from Fiona and Venerina in the weeks leading up to the day. With little public speaking experience I was very anxious when my turn came. Having some friendly faces in the audience helped me relax and just talk.

At a public speaking event I dread being boring most of all, and to me, standing up in front and reading slides or notes to the audience is the epitome of boring, so it's important that I be able to speak almost extemporaneously using the slides just to prompt or illustrate important points I want to make. The feedback I got from the committee on my confirmation talk was quite positive and suggested I looked a lot more comfortable than I felt.

Moving on to the year's frustrations, top of the list is my failure so far to get anything published. Out of a total of 4 submissions (2 each for 2 papers) I only have one "revise and try again" to show for all the work. My journal targeting is probably at least partly to blame for the two initial rejections, although the comments in one case seemed so off the mark that I supposed the reviewer hadn't actually read the MS. That first rejection was difficult to absorb but now having had 3 more it's getting easier to pick myself up and refocus.

I'm still struggling with some statistical concepts. I know I don't read enough about it. I have yet to find my perfect "Statistics for Dummies" book that will explain it all without those horrible mathematical formulas. I always have so many questions, and I'm afraid of making a statistical faux pas that will render my research useless. Or worse, unpublishable. On the other hand, learning about my statistics software and how to use it has been more fun than I ever imagined. I've learned that if I don't use it regularly, I forget a lot, which means I have to remind myself to use it regularly from now on.

I've been a bit disappointed that my data generally don't support my hypothesis that working as a midwife is a risk factor for WRUQMSD, at least not so far. It's possible though that I just haven't got far enough into the data set yet, and that the variables that will make a difference are waiting for me to find them.

I also feel like I'm slipping behind in my timeline because I don't yet have the first research publication ready to submit. I've had to reorganise my thinking about what the paper should cover, and that has meant running all the statistical tests again. Having done them, I now have more questions than before.

And now to the future: I'm looking forward with anticipation to finishing study 1 and getting it out to Birth; further analysing the data from surveys 1, 2 and eventually 3; and (with some trepidation) to organising and carrying out a qualitative study later this year. Further, I need to sort out what I can do that will help me with my statistics problems.

I can't say enough about the fabulous support I get from Fiona and Venerina, all the time. They are midwives to me as a novice researcher, and in my world that's the highest praise there is.

Thoughts on 2+ years in Oz

I was just reviewing my "what I miss/don't miss" and what I love/don't love" lists and realised I had to make some changes. It seems trite to say it, but a lot has happened since we moved here in September 2008. The Aussie dollar is now at parity with the US dollar, which is bad and good at the same time. Good when I have to feed our US bank account with Aussie dollars; bad when I look at the prices of some things here (shoes, bathing suits, books, electronic equipment and sometimes food, just to name a few) and where I used to say "well, X dollars, that's not so bad, it's really only .7 or .8X dollars in REAL money," I can no longer make that comparison.

On my love/miss lists, probably the biggest change has been the availability of good ice cream, i.e. Ben & Jerry's imported from the US of A. This is to take nothing away from the local purveyors of quite good gelato, but everyone knows gelato is not the same thing. My Ben & Jerry's moment arrived a few months ago when Brisbane-area delis started stocking 7 or 8 flavours, of which I actually only bother with one (Half-Baked, if you must know). I wonder what misguided market research led B&J's Australia to decide not to import Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz to this land of coffee and more coffee. And, sadly for me, there is also no Mint Chocolate Chunk to be had in pint containers, which by the way cost $11.95 at my nearest deli (I told you shit was expensive here!) making it an occasional treat, not a way of life. Sydney and now Melbourne have Scoop Shops; here in the provinces we're still waiting for one. If we should be so blessed, I am pretty sure my favourite MCC, as well as CCBBB for Phil, will be on the menu.

Bagels: not great bagels, but actually boiled and then baked bagels are for sale in the supermarket (plain or poppy), and in the CBD (that's Strine for "downtown") there's now a cute little place called Bagel Nook. BN imports its bagels from Melbourne, apparently the capital of all things Jewish in Oz, and even has sesame bagels on offer, in addition to what seems like five kinds of onion bagels (feh!). Unfortunately, BN is closed on weekends so my shopping trips there are limited to those days when I'm passing through the CBD on my way home from a meeting with my research supervisors.

It's summer and it's been a cool and wet one. When we arrived two years ago, Queensland was under rather severe water restrictions and building a desalination plant to cope with the drought that had been going on for something like 8 years at that point. The reservoirs were at about 15% of capacity. Surely it's mere coincidence but since we've been here it's rained so much that the reservoirs have been back to 100% for months now and communities that had all but dried up, literally, are now awash, again literally. Farmers just can't catch a break; they were anticipating their best harvest in years but were knocked back this time by too much rain rather than too little.

After a wet winter, spring reports had it that the desert areas to the west of us were blooming like they hadn't in years. Spring was often rainy and cool and, unusually, it wasn't until late November that I could wear shorts and go barefoot all day. And now it's summer, when we should be in the pool every day, but with what seems like near-constant rain and overcast skies between the deluges, swimming in an unheated pool just isn't that attractive an idea. I wouldn't wish for a return to the drought conditions, just some sun and blue skies once in a while. But before you think I'm complaining about the weather here, let me just say that I have no idea where we could live in the US that would give us the same weather benefits (no snow and ice) and yet be affordable and in a place we would actually want to live.

Then there's politics...oy. That'll be for another post.

Guarding the pool

I noticed this fellow in his, or perhaps her, very impressive web the other day while sweeping the pool deck. I hope he, or she, is catching a lot of mosquitoes out there.

The Aussie alphabet: H is for Holden

Holden, the iconic Australian vehicle. It's GM, Australian-style, Down Under's Chevy. It comes in a range of models from the tiny and cute to the sedate sedan to the SUV (of which there are many, many). But we can't talk Holden without talking ute, Ozspeak for utility vehicle, which I understand is every teenage boy's dream car. Remember the El Camino, which was a car in the front half and a pickup truck in the rear half? It's alive and very, very well here in Oz. From its beginnings as a real utility vehicle, it's been pimped to offer all the goodies a CUB* could want in a "lifestyle vehicle." Here are a classic EH station wagon from the 60s, along with a contemporary Commodore sedan and a ute.

Once I walked past an EH sedan of similar vintage to the one pictured here parked on the street and noticed the name badge across the boot ( = "trunk") had been modified from HOLDEN EH to read OLD EH. I thought the owner meant "old, eh?" until someone told me the model name was EH. Either way it's good.
*CUB: cashed-up bogan

Those beautiful girls

The jacarandas are in full bloom, but we've had buckets and buckets of rain nearly every day for the past month. Even the sunny days have usually been followed by rainy evenings/nights. My big news is the second MS I sent in was rejected, in record time. So it's back to the drawing board for that one while I still await a decision on my first paper from its second journal...On the plus side, I'm getting to be good friends with Stata. But that's too boring so instead here are some recent photos of the most beautiful little girls in the entire universe. Clockwise from bottom left: Zara on the first day of kindergarten; Amity enjoying a drumstick; Wes with the girls; and Amity exercising her new skill of pulling up on things.

Big weekend in Brissie

Yes, this weekend was the opening of the Brisbane Festival, which as near as I understand it is 4-ish weeks of music, dance, theatre etc. at various venues around the city. Since the 1st of the month we've had the Brisbane Writers' Festival going on, and today Paulie, Stephen, Phil & I went to hear Susan Maushart speak, which was my goal. She's a columnist in the Weekend Australian magazine and one of the only reasons I spend money on the paper (owned as it is by News Limited, i.e. Rupert Murdoch). (The other reason is Phillip Adams.) Imagine my sort-of surprise when she started speaking and I heard the pear-shaped tones of Long Island emanating from her mouth! I always had it in the back of my mind that she didn't write like an Australian, and it turns out that's because she's not an Australian! In person she is just as smart and funny as in her columns and I came home with two of her books, signed, and her gmail address. Sad for us here, she is leaving Oz in November to move back to the Gisland. Phil & I both talked to her at some length during a lull in the book signing and she appeared to be open to further contact either here or there. She is the sort of person I'd like to have living next door to me.

That was today, but last night was ... Riverfire. The pyrotechnic opening event of the Brisbane Festival and this year supposedly for the VERY LAST time - they said this last year too but turns out they were full of it - we were treated to the famous, or infamous, "dump and burn" courtesy of an aging RAAF F-111 jet. As bad environmentally and financially as it is, I have to say it's extremely cool to watch. Last year I went down to South Bank right next to where the fireworks display originates, but this year we just walked up to the reservoir where we have a great view of the city and watched from there. Not quite the same experience but nowhere near the crowds. The streak of light in the sky is burning fuel from the F-111, but the jet flies (and dumps and burns) all by itself, no simultaneous fireworks; this photo is a bit shopped. The link above has a video clip for a better idea of how it really looks.