Piquant observation and issue of grievance of the day: Whistling. Everyone does it. Everyone hates it when someone else does it. It's insidious, like a virus. Once one person starts, it seeps into the atmosphere of teh building, and before you know it, half of the building is whistling snippets of their favourite tune. Then, to your horror, you find yourself whistling along too... I love music. I don't even mind humming. There's just something about whistling that really bother...

Grievance of the day: Supervisors The honeymoon period has been over for a while, but in the absence of any extreme discomfort in my new job I simply thought that it was the sign of a perfect fit. Until my supervisor returned from her nth holiday to take over my paper and tell me that my discussion (not entirely written by me) is wrong. Let me offer you a word of advice. Never, ever listen to anything that a researcher says about their work. Research data is the most easily manipula...

Contronyms are words that are their own antonym, ie cleave = to separate AND to adhere. Just thought I'd share.

Today I was required to give a small talk, only about 30mins, to some guy on the defence graduates program, about my research. So I got up there, armed with a poster and a copy of my paper, and manged to not just talk about how, why and with whom we experimented, but I even managed to cover methodological points, such as determining standard deviations! This statistical victory is significant for me, because statistics is the one thing that I forever have to ask for help with. To be abl...

My supervisor just gave me some truly terrible news. She sent me an email that had come around about the colloquium, and someone dobbed me in as being a potentially interesting speaker for the divisional colloquium. I was partially hired, you see, on the basis of my being unafraid to perform. Having directed a cabaret worked in my favour. But this is different. This is me, getting up there, pouring out my months of hard work and anxiety and triumph, ME being on display. Me and my scie...

So, last night my friends Apryl, Rose and I went to our first Pilates class (and it was great, absolutely fantastic), and when we were gorging on pizza afterwards Apryl came up with this idea: That we should start a wedding planning business. No kidding. We have Rose the accountant for the business side, Apryl the archtect for interior design and lighting, and me there for co ordinating everything and maintaining the mental health of the bride and groom as their parents drive them...