The Aussie alphabet: M is for morning tea

Morning tea. Now there is a custom that needs to be adopted in the US.

Morning tea - not just a cup of something hot at around 10 or 10:30 in the morning, like the American coffee break.

Morning tea has tea, yes; coffee (always - this is Australia where they are serious about coffee). But there's more! Because you can't drink tea or coffee without a little bit of something to go with it, can you?

Scones. Banana bread or carrot cake. Lamingtons (yuck, but some people like). Even brownies. Or savoury treats like mini-quiches. Often bite-sized so you can have more than one or two. Sometimes fruit. Mmmmmm. You almost don't need lunch.

No conference, meeting, or gathering that happens in the morning will fail to offer you morning tea. It's part of the deal. Always good to know in case you didn't leave yourself enough time to eat breakfast; you needn't worry that you'll faint before lunchtime. Morning tea to the rescue.

I shouldn't leave M, though, without mentioning 'mate' and mateship. 

Mate = friend, buddy, pal; can be used as a noun ('my mates are coming by later') or a form of address to virtually anyone regardless of how well you know them ('hey mate, how're you going?' - to a friend you haven't seen in a while; 'no worries, mate' - to a stranger who has just apologised to you for some minor contretemps like bumping into you in a crowded space). In the past it was used mostly by men ('blokes') to other men. These days it's for anyone, though it seems to me I hear it mostly from blokes.

Mateship = an Australian value implying equality, loyalty, and friendship (says Wikipedia). A bit more intense than camaraderie. It comes up in military contexts where each one depends on and looks out for all the rest, a Band of Brothers kind of thing, or other circumstances in which a group of people share a common, usually difficult, experience.

6 years

This past weekend marked 6 years since Phil and I arrived in Oz for our gig. And it has been an adventure for sure.

We made some good friends.

Bought, and sold, a house.

Got to know two different neighbourhoods in Brisbane quite well and became acquainted with a few others. 

Visited North Qld, Byron Bay (several times), Sydney, Melbourne (both multiple times), Adelaide, Hobart, and surrounding areas of each.

For my part, I finished a PhD and a few quilts, taught some fabulous future midwives, and helped a few young new Australians learn English.

Phil created and led an innovation lab at the university, with much success and some frustration, and was sought out as a consultant or speaker at universities and schools, and even the Federal government.

Now as we anticipate leaving in just a few weeks, here is what I'll miss:

Friends.

TimTams. Yes, you can order them on Amazon, but they are super expensive, so no.

Living on the river in West End with the view that I never tire of, and where I can walk to everything. 

The CityCat ferries, most civilised transportation ever.

The weather, especially spring and fall.

The jacarandas in bloom in October.

Being 2 hours from Melbourne.

Really excellent wine, even though I can't drink very much of it at a time.

Prices that include tax and service charge.

Stories from Dad #1: Birth, 1951-style

A new occasional feature, capturing my Dad's memories while he is still around to tell them. This one, starring me! 

It was the evening, or maybe late afternoon, of August 28, 1951. Mom's water broke, and Dad brought her over to the hospital. 

At the time, Dad was part of the broadcast team for the local baseball team, the Elmira Pioneers, an A-league farm team for the Brooklyn Dodgers. 

Interesting fact: during that same 1951 season, Don Zimmer, then a Pioneers player and later the bench coach of the New York Yankees, got married at home plate, Dunn Field (the Pioneers' home stadium). Wonder what the bride really thought about that!

The Pioneers had a home game that night, and Mom apparently wasn't doing much in the way of contractions so she sent him off to the game. He left the phone number of the broadcast booth with the labor room nurses in case 'something happened I should know about'. But nothing did, and after the game, around 10:15 pm, he stopped off at the hospital to see how things were going with Mom. 

(Ed. note: I was surprised to hear they let him in to see her, being under the impression that until the late 60s or even later, fathers were banished entirely until the bundles of joy were out, cleaned up and moms likewise cleaned up, spiffy in their new pink nightgowns and beaming with bundle of joy in arms. But perhaps not. Or maybe it was up to the doctor in charge, and he would have let Dad in. Anyway on with the story.)

Dad stayed with Mom for (he says) about an hour or so. (I couldn't get him to clarify this so I'm just guessing that she still wasn't doing much contracting.) He left to go get some sleep and given the 'not much happening', the GP who was our family doctor and Mom's attending doc - since other than being a bit old, she was normal, and GPs did births all the time back then - would also have been home trying to get some sleep until needed for the big event.

Home for both Dad and Doc Gridley was Horseheads, only about 6 miles north of Elmira but at the time requiring a long distance call and the services of an actual human operator. When the labor nurse saw that I was getting ready to make my debut, she called Doc - and called - and called - and the Horseheads operator never answered. In the end it was some intern who caught me, unless it was actually the nurse but she had to credit the doctor for it. Because, good heavens, how could someone who's not a doctor catch a baby on their own responsibility!!?? That was at 2:34 am on Wednesday, August 29.

Dad says he got a call from the hospital around 7 am to tell him he had another daughter. (I haven't asked if he was disappointed about me not being a boy. Too threatening.) Presumably he was soon enough at Mom's bedside admiring the new bundle.

That bundle would later: cause so much trouble in her first grade class that she was sent up to second grade; set a kitchen on fire; read left-wing periodicals; vote Democratic; throw tear gas canisters back at police; hitchhike across the country and back twice; experiment with illegal mind-altering chemicals; convert to Judaism; and get divorced. Had he known all this at the time, I am certain he would have been horrified.

It was later determined that the hapless telephone operator had fallen asleep at the switch(board), and sadly, though not unsurprisingly, was sacked for it. 

And that's the story.

Three rants

This has been coming for a while now.

 Rant #1: 'High school degree'. I read this only a few weeks ago in the soi-disant Paper of Record, the august New York Times. My understanding has always been that only people who complete a course of study at a college or university get a Degree, whereas what you get when you finish high school is called a Diploma. But it's possible I could be wrong. So, let's see what the DICTIONARY has to say:

from The Free Dictionary: An academic title given by a college or university to a student who has completed a course of study: received the Bachelor of Arts degree at commencement.

from Merriam-Webster: a title conferred on students by a college, university, or professional school on completion of a program of study.

And when you google "high school degree", guess what comes up?

High school diploma - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now we have three sources that say I'm right: the words 'degree' and 'high school' do not belong together. So dammit, New York Times and everyone else in the world, get it right!

Rant #2: 'Emergency cesarean section'. This terminology is used in Oz to describe a c-section done when the woman is already in labor. Now some of them are indeed emergencies: a prolapsed umbilical cord, for example; or massive hemorrhage. But in Oz, the term is applied not just to these rare and actually life-threatening situations but to ANY cesarean on any woman in labor, or I guess I should say labour since it's Oz we're talking about.

Referring to Merriam-Webster again, we find an 'emergency' is: an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action.

And this from the Oxford Dictionary online: a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action.

Anyone who has worked in a labor and birth unit knows that while immediate action may be needed in some 'emergency cesarean' situations like the ones cited above, there are many others - possibly even the majority -  where the problem is that the baby just isn't coming out the usual way. And while you wouldn't want any undue delays, as long as the mother and baby are both stable, there is no 'emergency'. I think another slightly less fraught term should be substituted. Something like, say, 'cesarean section in labour'.

Rant #3: Hobby Lobby. My nominee for the most nauseating and obnoxious business name ever. Not only does the rhymey name itself make my teeth itch, but it's a chain of craft supplies stores where odds are everything in the whole place was made in Chinese sweatshops. It's owned by religious nutjobs who quite illogically oppose both abortion AND the only thing that actually decreases the need for abortion, i.e., contraception. Here is the latest on that front  nyti.ms/1cK3CJZ. Maybe it would be okay for HL (I can't even bring myself to write it out again, never mind say it out loud) not to allow even their medical insurance provider to cover contraceptives without a co-pay if the company were to pay their employees a real living wage and while we're at it, how about a bonus for every baby? But according to www.payscale.com, the starting hourly rate for a cashier is a meager $7.85 and even managers top out at under $20/hour. I can't say I hope they go out of business, because that would mean a lot of people would be unemployed and even worse off than they are now, but  let's just say I wouldn't be sorry to see them get bought out by Costco.

By no means is my ranting done, but I think 3 is a good number for a blog post. I like that I included one US usage, one Australian usage, and one evil business; I didn't plan it that way, it just happened, but it has a certain appeal and perhaps will be a template for future rantful posts. Cheers mate!  

Uncertainty is life

Where has the time gone? As of January, we've been in the Treehouse for 4 years, and as of last month, in Oz for 4 1/2. That means that our first 5 years in Oz are rapidly coming to a close. And let me tell you there's nothing like the impending end of an employment contract to get you thinking about, well, pretty much everything.

Now that I'm no longer a student, I have the opportunity to look for a job. But where should I look? In pursuit of a return to the US, Phil's job hunting back there, but nothing has come up on that front yet. UQ would like him to stay, and that's looking likely at least for another year. So then, look here. But what if a US job comes through for Phil? So then, wait.

Further in pursuit of a return to the US, we've put the Treehouse on the market. Now, the Treehouse isn't your ordinary house. It will not appeal to the average person. You need to be a bit adventurous to live here, and not mind spiders or geckos. You need to appreciate the quirks and not mind the upkeep too much. Knowing this, we decided to sell up as soon as we can, after which we'll either move our stuff and ourselves back to the US, or move to a more modestly-sized rental in Brisbane for however much longer we're here. After a month on the market and 4 open houses, accompanied first by online and now by print advertising ($$$$!), we've had exactly 0 serious interest. At least we can say that we correctly anticipated a tough sell. 3 more open houses and we go to auction on the 25th of May, and see what happens.

But even this is fraught. What if a buyer wants to close quickly? What will we do with all our stuff, which now fills 11 rooms and the storage space under the house, and only some of which we need to have to hand? Rent storage (an action I vowed never to take)? Engage a mover now for storage until we actually do leave? Clearly triaging of possessions will be required and these will include some that were not mine originally and that I didn't want to bring here in the first place. Fireworks will ensue, I have no doubt.

So supposing we stay: what sort of job should I look for? I haven't practiced midwifery in nearly 5 years but I have no immediate prospects for practice here. No one's hiring except one midwifery education program; they want a full-time person, and I don't want to work full-time. I just helped my physio PhD advisor write a grant that includes a 0.8 FTE research assistant position, and I might be a candidate for that position, IF she gets the grant and IF it's funded. Did I get a PhD to be a research assistant? 

Here are my big worries: What if 6 months go by and the house hasn't sold? What if Phil finds a job in the US and the house hasn't sold? What if we can't sell it for enough to at least get our down payment back after we pay off the mortgage and the real estate agent's fee and still have enough left to fund the move back?

And, not so big but a factor nonetheless: we could be leaving before I've had a chance to see Perth, and Darwin, and Singapore, and Thailand and NZ, and some of those islands in the S. Pacific. It's a long and expensive way to come on a holiday from the US. If that weren't the case, we would have had more visitors here at the Treehouse. So, as much as I want to go back and be Marmee, I also want to stay and see more of this part of the world while it's a shorter and cheaper trip to do so.

So, there it all is, but I have to stop thinking about it before my head explodes. Channeling Scarlett O'Hara - I'll think about it tomorrow.

Animals you might see at (or near) our house

This post is for Amity (happy birthday, little Groundhog!) and Zara! Here are some of the animals you may see while you're visiting Oz.

1. Geckos

Geckos are small, very fast, and a bit shy, so you usually only see them very briefly. They are helpful because they eat spiders and mosquitoes. They look like this:

They make a sort of chirping sound which can be pretty loud when you think about how small they are. It sounds like this:

2. Gecko poo

Where there are geckos, there is gecko poo. It's hard to tell from the photo, but a poo is very small, about the size of a grain of long-grain rice. It almost always has a little white dot at one end, which is the gecko's pee. This is what it looks like:

3. Cockroaches

I know this may sound rather unpleasant, but better to be forewarned. The sort of climate we have here is very welcoming for all kinds of creatures, not all of which are ideal neighbours, and cockroaches are in that category. Usually if you see one in the house, it will be dead and look like this:

But sometimes they are alive and look like this:

I haven't seen any lately so I hope they've moved on.

4. Tiny little black ants

They're so small I couldn't even find any photos of them. They aren't much bigger than this apostrophe: '  They tickle a bit when they crawl on you but don't hurt you. Best to leave ants alone though, because there are other kinds that aren't so nice and it can be hard to tell which ones you're looking at.

5. Spiders

Spiders have 8 legs and come in all sizes. They trap flies and mosquitoes in their webs so we usually leave them alone and they leave us alone. I see lots of daddy longlegs around, and  you've probably seen them too, because they're very common just about everywhere:

I sometimes see a spider sort of like this one, in a big web, and leave it alone to let it do its spidery work:

6. Water dragons

These guys are relatives of the geckos, but they're bigger, though also very shy. We sometimes have one visiting the pool.

7. Birds

Lately I mostly hear crows squawking around here. They're big and black:

We also see a lot of magpies around:

But sometimes one of our trees gets a visit from a kookaburra or two. They are native to Australia and have a very distinctive call:

And there are always the brush turkeys - they walk all through the neighbourhood:

8. Possums

Possums come out at night - they're nocturnal - and they sometimes have fights on our rooftop with a lot of hissing. They can be bold, but if you pretend you're going to chase them they run away.

I hope you liked this little introduction to our local animals.

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!