Okay, when was my last... almost 2 months ago?! Whoops, guess I've got caught up in some of my last months in Australia.
My flight home is booked, I'll be back in Glasgow on the evening of the 6th of July, though probably in no fit state to drink. There will be celebration soon afterwards I'm sure. I want a cheese and onion pastie and a pint of Tennants.
The bad news (for me) is I don't have a job lined up, so I'll need to go through all that; the good news is the uni are paying me for some electrical design work I've been doing alongside my thesis, so will have something to live on until I do get work. I'm expecting to loose a large chunk of it to aussie tax, but hopefully there'll be enough left for a few beers (and maybe food...).
One of the reasons for the lack of blogs is the amount I still have to do in the next few months. The project has a whole bunch of work and documentation that needs done, plus there's that extra work I'm doing. I need to sell the car, my bike, guitar etc. Actually selling the bike might be quite difficult now, as the bearings on the back wheel have come loose (so it shakes and jams, can't be ridden), and the bearing enclosure is rusted solid preventing maintenance. Wondering if I can sell it to some poor sod without telling him?
The other reason for the lack of blogs is that detailed info on how the project is going is really only interesting to a few of my more technically minded friends (and even then, it's a boring project), but there have been a few weekend adventures:
I've been out picking mushrooms a couple of times, for Saffron Milk Cups and Slippery Jacks (lots of walking, staring intently at the ground). Plenty of risottos have been made, and I also tried drying some, which may even make it home if customs don't think they're magic. While I'm on the subject of food, I burnt off all my taste buds with experiments into home-made mustard a month back, which took about a week to regrow. Still, trial and error. I've got a wild goat in the oven right now that I'm expecting great things from.
Bought myself a kindle, which got delivered from the U.S. in 3 days! (just shows what international postage can be like when it tries), so I've been reading through all the great works of Sci-fi that I never did as a child (Dune, Foundation, Contact, Childhood's End, Flatland, etc... plenty still to go. I'm pretty much following this), as well as classics like Don Quixote and contemporary books like the Omnivore's Dilemma. The weather is periodically rainy, but mostly still in the 20°s with bright sunshine, so I read in the local parks.
Getting pretty good on the Bagpipes now (well, the practice chanter anyway. I'll upgrade to proper bagpipes when I have several hundred quid spare and can get them in the McDonald of the Isles tartan). Next new-year's party I'll be able to give the auld lang syne on the chanter (which is still pretty loud). Meanwhile I've got the guitar working through the laptop so have been having fun with effects and not really learning anything new.
Speaking of "through the laptop" that's where I accidentally put my last dram of whisky. My last dram. It went in the keyboard and came out the bottom. Mourning the loss (and in search of a beer), I forgot to turn it off or disconnect the power. Amazingly it mostly still functions, it just killed a bunch of the keys, so I have to use an external keyboard now.
That's not a very fluent blog is it? Well I have a lot to do, most of the writing I do nowadays is in the third person, so I have to be glad that this isn't.
“On the 04/05/2011 between the hours of 22:00 and 23:00 exactly 37ml of 12 year old Caol Ila was filtered through the chassis of a Toshiba Satellite A500, entering through the keyboard [Fig 13]. Initial diagnosis showed minimal adverse effects, however by 08:15 the following morning over 30 keys were unresponsive, including all but two on the home row, necessitating the acquisition of a substitute.”
