Spring is sprung

Well first of all, apologies again that it’s been such a long time since I wrote this! I just had to re-read my last couple of posts to remember what I’d been up to last time. Time seems to have flown by since the conference trip to Puerto Rico, and have found myself up to my eyeballs in labwork, moving house, and rowing. Even sleep seems to have gone out of the window a little which is quite upsetting. I love my sleep.

I moved house about a month after I came back from PR, into a shared house with young professionals. Turns out that it wasn’t such a great move, and it’s definitely been a stop-gap! Am moving into a house with work friends in a week’s time (HOORAH!), as one of them is off to the States for 3 months for an internship.

Training hasn’t slacked off much either, have kept super busy with that. Still not back to the same strength and fitness I had when I was an undergrad, but I think the main reason for that is time. I used to go to the gym for a few hours most days when I was an undergrad, often because I simply didn’t have anything else to do! Now, it’s a case of stay at work until I’ve done everything I need, then once I leave, head to the gym and try and get my set session in, then go home and collapse into bed! Having said that, I think it’s kept me sane whilst moving house and having so much labwork to do. If I’m physically exhausted at least I tend to sleep better.

Our big winter race (Women’s Head of the River Race) in London went really well, and we finished in a very respectable placing of 45^th (out of 299 crews), 3^rd in our category. For “fun” the next day we raced a banter 8 in our local Southampton Head race, with a load of the ex-rowers. It may not have been full of people at full fitness, but it was “bang tidy” to quote the others! It’s a nice way to finish the relentless winter slog of outings in the rain, wind and general gross weather. Bring on the regatta season!!!

I went home for mothering Sunday weekend (a few rare weekends off from rowing as the undergraduates were all off for Easter holidays!), and visited the sis in her new flat in Leamington Spa, and had a bit of a baking session. I love baking, but sadly the kitchen in the new house is not somewhere where I want to spend a lot of time, plus the seal on the oven is crap, so totally useless for baking. Probably good for me not to eat so much cake though :)

Following weekend I went up to London for the first time in ages, and for the first time ever, the boy came with me!!! Had a fab weekend, the weather was absolutely baking, especially for only the beginning of April. We went to the Tate modern, then walked to the Natural History museum, dipped our feet in the Diana Princess of Wales memorial fountain, and then eventually made it over to Oli and Beth’s house, and out for a yummy curry in Herne Hill. Unfortunately I’d forgotten to charge my camera so have no photos at all from the day :( fortunately, O and B have the same camera as me, so I stuck it on charge at theirs. London Zoo the next day, for the WHOLE day, and then wandered back through Camden, grabbed Chinese food from a street vendor, and sat in the sunshine to eat. Beautiful weather again, really nice weekend all round!

Puerto Rico

So this entry will be all about my little trip to Puerto Rico, apologies if you don’t want to know how lovely and warm and sunny and great it was :)

Very early start – got collected from my house at 4.15am by the taxi for us to get to Heathrow. Flight to New York (JFK) with British Airways (sadly at this time in the morning even I couldn’t stomach the idea of free alcohol!), then a connecting flight to San Juan with American Airlines (obviously no food as it’s an “internal” flight...). taxi driver got lost trying to find our apartment in PR (7 of us were renting an apartment for the conference week as it was so much cheaper than staying in hotels like other people were doing), but fortunately there was a 24hour supermarket pretty close, so we were happily stocked up with beers and food before too long.

Sunday was a day off, with registration and social ‘mixer’ for the conference in the evening, so we went to the beach in the morning (yeay!) and got ourselves reacquainted with the delights of sweat, suncream and sand mixes. The social mixer in the evening was sponsored by Rum de Puerto Rico, a government initiative to promote the image of Puerto Rican Rum. Fine by me – free rum all night!! The convention centre is a pretty cool building too. Conference was mostly pretty full-on during the days, and then evenings we either ate out, or just cooked in the apartment. Had a big BBQ on our lovely little roof terrace one evening with all of the other Southampton people who were staying in and around the same area. Went on an estuary field trip too on the second day and saw tonnes of iguanas.

Went to a Puerto Rican local cafe for dinner one night, and had an amazing dish called trifongo. As far as I can understand, this is a combination of green plantain, yellow plantain and cassava. With a sort of curried chicken sauce it was AMAZING. I want to find a recipe but all I can find is in Spanish, so may have to employ the help of some Spanish-speaking people! Mmmm amazing. Lots of local Medalla beer drunk as well throughout the week :)

I presented a poster on the Thursday afternoon/evening, which went quite well, and got some good feedback for it which was nice. On the Friday lunchtime we discovered we could use the Sheraton hotel pool (literally across the street from the conference centre), which was amazing for a bit of Friday afternoon relaxing by the pool (an infinity pool no less), and a raspberry mojito. Yes.

Saturday was then a super busy day – went to the airport really early to collect a rental car (got a massively pimping jeep for the 2 days), which unfortunately I wasn’t able to drive as I was too young to be cheap on the insurance :(. Drove out of San Juan into the rainforest, and did some walking. It rained on us. Unsurprising really when you think about it. It was rather like doing a 5km walk in a steam room though, so probably pretty good exercise for us.

Then we drove down onto the south coast and stopped off at a beach to have our first dip in the Caribbean Sea (it’s technically still the Atlantic on the north coast of the island), and have a look at the lighthouse there (I like lighthouses – is that wrong?). Spectacular sunset, and the most hilariously bumpy road in the world to get in and out of the parking area. Also stopped at an amazing smoothie place – literally a wooden shed-type building by the side of the road doing fresh fruit smoothies. I had banana, strawberry and coconut. So good.

Then Sunday we played on the beach in the morning (the sea was so, so, so nice and warm and lovely), before driving back to San Juan via the Arecibo telescope (the radio satellite that was in James Bond Goldeneye). It’s pretty damm cool and absolutely massive! Got stuck in a massive traffic jam trying to get into old San Juan to drop Geordie off at his hostel before we took the car back – we ended up staying at the Cardiovascular centre in the hospital complex – weirdly they have one floor that acts as a hotel, only about 10 rooms or so. They were the comfiest beds in the world so I can’t complain too much! Flew back on the Monday, and to our delight managed to get 4 seats to ourselves each (there were 3 of us on that flight together) at the back of a reasonably full flight. I would have hated me if I was one of the other passengers. Oh well, if you don’t ask, you don’t get!

Busy busy with work for the next few months now, as I’m trying to get all my lab work done by early-mid summer, so that I can start data processing and starting the mammoth task of writing up :s scary. Saw a lot of friends this weekend which was lovely, from all over the place, including two of my friends from Bermuda who were over as they’d been on one of the Antarctic science cruises, and were flying back through the UK. Now the usual task of Sunday afternoon room tidying, cleaning, and getting ready for the week ahead :(

lalalalalalala

So, what to update on. Well, not a lot has happened to be honest. Training has been pretty brutal since the new year, both in terms of recovering from flu (takes bloody aaaaages to get strength back!), and hitting the training sessions hard. If I include the weights sessions, at the moment I have it so that I don’t have a single day off during the week. Mostly it’s ok, as I’m starting to manage my time around it a bit better. Mondays I tend to just leave work early to go to the gym, and then go back to work and stay at work until 9 or 9.30pm. It keeps me out of the house too, as I’m getting a bit stressed about wanting to move house. I’ve had a look at a few one-bedroom flats and studio flats this week, and they are vile. Really pretty skanky. Or, they’re potentially ok, but in a really grim area or scabby building. Urgh. Never mind. I’m sure I’ll find somewhere eventually!

Went up to Oxford for the evening to watch the Princeton University Orchestra perform a concert at the Sheldonian theatre. I met one of the oboeists whilst I was working out in Bermuda this year, so I went up to support her. My parents came down from home as well, so had a nice dinner with them, and then caught the train back to soton. I haven’t been to Oxford since I was about 6, and it’s absolutely lovely! Such a pretty city, and I don’t know why I haven’t been there since. Definitely somewhere to go once it gets to summer.

Went to a house party at my friends house (feel like I’m getting a bit too old for ‘house parties’ now, but it’s a house of 7 girls I used to row with, and really, it’s cheaper than going out, and just as much fun. And it wasn’t hugely busy, and I knew the majority of people there anyway! Had an early morning outing the next morning though, so rewarded myself with fry-up the next morning once I was back :)

On another food front – Burns night. I (upsettingly) had to buy a vegetarian haggis as there were no meat haggis’ (what’s the plural of haggis?) left, apart from monster ones that would have fed about ten people. It was a McSween’s haggis though, and was lovely. Had mashed turnips and carrots, and potato cakes made with leftover mash. I only managed half my plate of food, so had it for lunch the next day instead :) nom nom.

Went to Playzone for a friend’s 21^st birthday (seems so young!) on Friday night. AMAZING! It’s basically a kid’s play area, with swing ropes, death slides, padded rollers and walls, netting, ball pits, the lot. And we went wearing lycra so it was even slidier. But we were all exhausted after about an hour and a half! I can see why parents take their children to places like that – tire them out well and truly, then they’ll sleep all night. We didn’t sleep all night. We went out. Not for long, but long enough for one of the girls to get herself in such a tiz that she had tantrums all the way home, and it took us about 90 minutes to get her to walk half a mile home. We then had to guard the door to try and stop her leaving the house again. It’s a good job we all know and love her when she’s sober, that’s all I can say! (and I made an amazing cake even if I do say so myself)

Off to Puerto Rico on Saturday for the ASLO Aquatic Sciences conference. Got my poster printed out for my poster presentation, flights and accommodation booked, located my passport, got some dollars, and found the bikinis and suncream :)

Christmas Cheer

The last weekend in Southampton before Christmas was basically a weekend of eating. Work Christmas ball on the Thursday night, followed by Roast on Saturday night at Joe and Claud’s (fortunately they live just around the corner, so could just waddle home when I’d eaten and drunk too much). Joe always makes amazing face-sized Yorkshire puddings that are big enough to hold the rest of your meal in. Amazing. Played the After Eight game as well (place an After Eight chocolate on your forehead, and by wiggling your face around, get it into your mouth as quickly as possible without using your hands, and without it falling off your face), which always guarantees hilarity. Teeny was not so good at it.

The Sunday evening was another mammoth eating session. 14 of us were doing a massive Christmas meal and Secret Santa, split between our house, and our friend’s house across the road. Canapés and mulled wine at our house, and some party games including pass-the-parcel and modelling balloons, and then across the road for the main course, pudding and Secret Santa. I was in charge of pudding, so made treacle tart and sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch sauce. I am pleased to report that both of them went down a treat, and came home with a small amount of sticky toffee pudding and that’s it! Ate farrrr too much, we had a mammoth turkey between us all, and different people had all contributed some different part to the whole evening. Very well organised and a lot of fun. The Secret Santa person I’d drawn from a hat was proving very difficult to decide what to get her (we had a £10 limit), so I ended up painting her two little canvasses, with a basking shark and a whale shark on (her PhD is based on Basking sharks). I think she liked them (I hope she liked them!).

Next day was followed by Thai takeaway in order to celebrate my housemate Rich going through his viva (oral defence of his PhD thesis) successfully and becoming Dr Rich. Next evening somehow ended up as going out for curry with an office mate, a friend who used to work in Bermuda, their old housemates, and one of my friends who works in Bermuda but was home in Southampton for Christmas. The weather had another attempt at snowing, but nothing really settled in Southampton. However, the midlands had been hit pretty badly, so headed home on the Wednesday afternoon with slight trepidation about how long it would take me to get home. Fortunately, apart from the fast lane of the motorway being mostly covered in snow, the only real problem I had was once I got onto our estate. Because it’s an un-adopted road, it means the council won’t clear it or grit it, so it was still 6 inches deep in fresh snow! Finally managed to get into our driveway, and I have to say, much as I hate my little car sometimes for its practicality (or lack of), it was actually remarkably good on the snow, I think because it’s front-wheel drive and so light. Dad’s car was terrifying on the snow when we went to church on Christmas Day. Poor sis was ill with flu over the Christmas period, so spent most of the time either curled up in a blanket on the sofa, or in bed :( Not very festive for her unfortunately (but pretty quiet for the rest of the family!). Ridiculously cold for most of the week I was at home, think we saw temperatures of -13 in the mornings, and daytime highs of around -5 or -6’C. Very unusual for the midlands, certainly in my memory it’s not been that cold. Did some baking on Christmas Eve with my friend Millie (we made the Christmas muffins again), helped mum decorate the Christmas cake, made gingerbread men and generally got in the way.

Christmas was full of food, family time and festivities. Unfortunately had to come back to Southampton on the 28^th Dec to get into the lab in order to filter 80 water samples in time for the middle of the first week of Jan. The guy in charge of the analysis machine I needed to use (ICP-AES) was going on the Antarctic research cruise on the Friday 7^th, so needed to have all the samples ready, measured and analysed before he left. I was filtering 2.5ml of my samples at a time, washing with 5ml of ammonium bicarbonate, and even running on average 10 hour days in the lab, I was only getting through about 18 or 20 a day. SO DULL!!! To top things off, I started feeling poorly on the 29^th, and by New Year’s Eve had no voice. Pulled a 12 hour day in the lab, came home at 8.30, ate dinner with my housemate and his friends, saw in the New Year and then promptly went to bed. Felt like death warmed up on New Year’s Day, but still had to go into the lab. Proper fever, shivering, sweating, coughing, dizzy, headache, and generally feeling extremely sorry for myself. When I wasn’t at work in the lab? At home in bed. Fantastic start to 2011. But, it paid off as I managed to get my samples done in time, and analysed before the lab tech went off to sea. Nothing much to report since then, made a cake for the boy’s birthday which I was particularly proud of (my sponge cakes never really seem to work, but this one worked, looked nice, and dare I say it, tasted bloody marvellous). Job done.

xx

Welcome to winter

Well, where to start really. It’s been an awfully long time, which I don’t really have any excuse for. I’m good at remembering that I need to do things, but bad at actually galvanising myself into action for doing them. But, seeing as it’s a Saturday, the house is empty, my washing is in the washing machine, my clean clothes are folded, I’ve had a bath, and I am armed with a cup of tea, I decided it was probably time to remedy my literary absence.

So, I arrived home from Bermuda at the beginning of November, straight back to Southampton, to basically be dumped. Fantastic news to come back to. Fortunately had already planned to go home for the weekend to see the parentals, so had some much needed mummy hugs and home-cooking :) Managed to time the trip home with Bonfire Night, so went to the local fireworks and bonfire display with mummy B, and we drank mulled cider and bought toffee apples. New cycling shoes had arrived for me too whilst I was away, which was exciting, but not all that useful seeing as I hadn’t replaced the bike I sold in Bermuda in July! Needless to say that’s pretty high up on the list of priorities!

Things on the boy front have got a lot better since I got back, it would appear that it was a temporary blip in the boy’s relationship mind-set, so things are a bit more normal. It’s prompted me to get off my arse and make more time to see my friends more often though, which can only be a good thing. Back to PhD work with a bump after that, which was a bit of a shock after nearly 2 months off. Lots of labwork on the cards in the near future, which is a good thing as it breaks up the monotony of trying to read journals and write science things. Have submitted an abstract to the ASLO conference in Puerto Rico in February, so that’ll be my next (short) trip abroad.

I also made the decision to go back to rowing competitively for the University club. Basically I just can’t stay away........ and I realised that in reality I don’t do much with my weekends, apart from the odd trip up to London to see friends up there. Especially if the boy is busy working (which he quite often is, not being very good with deadlines.....), I find that I just sort of potter around and waste my weekend. I’m not a massive fan of lie-ins, or the prospect of being a bed-pig (thanks to Stephen Fry and my sister for alerting me to this amazing phrase), so I figured that actually going back to rowing would give me something to do, and also ensure that I went to the gym regularly again. I love exercising, and hate it when I’m unfit, but I’m a fundamentally lazy person, and I need the motivation of training partners, or being part of a team to really get the best out of me where sports is concerned. The only thing I find I am happy going out and doing when I’m feeling half-hearted about life is running. Which is weird considering I used to hate it. I hate to say it, but I find a peaceful sort of solace in long runs on my own. More so at home, where I can run along the river, and through fields and countryside, but I guess I can’t really be choosy in Southampton! Pavements or nothing........ especially if it’s dark.

Sure enough, winter arrived pretty quickly in the UK once I was back. I’d sort of forgotten that I’d missed autumn, as places like Bermuda don’t have seasons that you can see in the trees and the leaves; just the amount of sunshine and rain varies. First notable thing to do when I was back was get back into running pretty quickly, as I’d entered Hellrunner again. I ran it last year with my then housemate, and loved it. It’s a cross-country run, advertised as “between 10 and 12 miles” on an army base in Hampshire and it includes the Hills of Hell and the Bog of Doom. Last year it was unusually warm considering it was the 3^rd weekend of November, with blue skies and sunshine. No such luck this year. The thermometer on the car read -1’C when we arrived in the morning, after a week of near zero temperatures, and extremely frosty mornings. However, with some clever office plotting, my enthusiasm about the previous year, and my office mate Katie’s enthusiasm for doing mental things, meant that there was a group of 7 of us running. Anyone who’s spent any time doing outdoor sports, or endurance races or anything like that will be very familiar with portaloos, and the pre-race queues that go along with them. The joys of minus temperatures meant that the flushing mechanisms had frozen, so they couldn’t be flushed. Needless to say we very quickly migrated to trips to the bushes for pre-race nervous wees.

This year all the early puddles were frozen, and the ground was hard and dry, so we actually stayed completely dry until the first mini-bog about half-way through the race. Then you hear the squeals coming through the woods and you realise you’re getting close to the Bog of Doom. I swear it was deeper this year than it was last year. Out of the 7 of us, 3 of us were running out in front, and poor Anya (an orienteer and extremely quick runner!) practically disappeared under whilst we were trying to get through the bog. Even sticking to the sides of the bog I was struggling, and ended up having to put my hands under to try and stop me falling over when I tripped over a log underwater. Eventually finished, and despite everyone’s varying stages of exhaustion and hyperthermia, everyone agreed that they had enjoyed it which I was extremely glad about – had nightmares that everyone was going to hate me because I’d raved about how much I’d enjoyed the previous year! (Photo below from RandR Photos)

The cold weather carried on into early December, and we all woke up on the morning of the 2^nd to about 5 or 6 inches of snow in Southampton. We are right on the South coast of the UK, so for us to get thick snow that actually settles and stays is extremely rare. Obviously I took a snow day and went to play on Southampton common. Found the boy and his housemate sledging on an estate-agents sign that worked surprisingly well. I didn’t even try and drive anywhere, so poor mini just sat where she was for a few days. Then we got to the stage where everyone is fed up of the snow because it stops looking pretty, gets slushy and icy, and generally just makes life annoying. I couldn’t drive anywhere as our road was sheet ice and on a hill, and I couldn’t cycle anywhere, as I only own a racing bike with pretty slick road tyres. Not a good idea. Went to visit the sister in Calne 9 days or so later, and there were still small patches of snow in sheltered areas of hills around the Wiltshire countryside. Nice little walk followed by a pub lunch :) Got into the winter baking spirit that week, made some Christmas muffins (with lots of mixed spice, cinnamon, nuts and berries), and then the first batch of mince pies (homemade pastry but not mincemeat I’m afraid!). Even got around to doing some of my Christmas shopping (online of course, I got cross with all the people wandering around at super slow speed in town....)

.

xx

Happy Halloween!

Ok wow where has time gone. Actually I know exactly where it’s gone....... flown by! So, I had 3 days at home after Hawaii. I got home at 2.30 in the morning on the Tuesday to be greeted by the news that my car had leaked petrol everywhere, and shouldn’t be driven. Then I realised that both the tax and the MOT were due to expire that week, just as I was leaving the country to go back to Bermuda. Fortunately there is a garage just at the end of my road, so I was able to dump the car with them, and get on with sorting everything out for Bermuda. Made all the more difficult by the fact that my room is currently rented out to someone for a month, as I’m away such a lot. But, all of my stuff is still there, and this person I swear has brought ALL their stuff and put it in my room. I swear she has more stuff than me!! So that was a little bit stressful trying to get everything ready in time. Oh, and just the small matter of me doing my upgrade presentation, and upgrade meeting to get out of the way before I went to Bermuda. But, that all went fine thankfully, so I am now officially a proper registered DPhil student rather than an MPhil. Whoop! Carefully planned to arrive in BDA in time for BIOS international sports day (UK & Commonwealth against US and rest of the world).

So back off to Bermuda, this time for a month’s teaching contract. I’m co-teaching a course on Introduction to Biological Oceanography, to 9 foreign postgrad students. None of them have English as a first language...... they come from Turkey, Cote D’Ivoire, India, Iran, Ecuador, Venezuela, Russia, Vietnam and Brazil, with varying levels of interest, knowledge and English abilities! Trying to get them to do a lot of hands-on practical work too as that's part of the objective of the Nippon Foundation POGO course.....

Basically to cut a long story short, it has been an extremely stressful experience, and I am so so glad that Sarah was co-teaching with me, otherwise I would have drowned in stress and probably not slept for 3 weeks. The first two weeks we were averaging around 16-18 hour days.... eurgh. But, it’s all over now, save for some (quite a lot of) marking, and their feedback. I know it's been a great experience for me, and I'm sure that if I was to teach the same module again next year it would be infinitely easier, given that we've actually written lecture material, summary tests, problem sets etc. already. But no, not again.

Took a very brief trip home for the weekend after the first 3 weeks in Bermuda (first week was prep, then two weeks of teaching) for one of my friends’ wedding. They sent out the date ages ago, before I agreed to do this, and I desperately wanted to go. What with buying the flight home etc it means I pretty much just broke even with the teaching, but I can cope with that. I desperately needed a break from being on station and around work all the time. Had a wonderful weekend, the wedding in Cheltenham was lovely, and it was so nice to see Adam and Anna so happy :) Then a drive back to Gatwick from Cheltenham the next morning (via a quick detour around Cheltenham to find a MacDonald’s breakfast!) and back on the plane to BDA! Non-stop lifestyle.

Finished off the week with the annual BIOS underwater pumpkin carving contest for certified divers on station. One pumpkin per buddy team, no cuts allowed until you were in the water with your pumpkin. They are amazingly buoyant, and we had to cut into ours at the surface to let the air out before we could sink with it. Even then we had to put dive weights in him to make sure he didn’t float away! The current was very strong and the visibility was pretty poor, as we were diving straight off the dock into Ferry Reach. We were supposed to be taking the boat round to Whalebone bay to dive, but thanks to Tropical Storm Shary coming through, that idea was abandoned!

In the end we (myself and Becky) won scariest pumpkin, for our anglerfish :) we did have a coat hanger to attach the lure (an orange with a face carved in it) onto the top of the fish (pumpkin) but somehow we lost it in the struggle to get the pumpkin down onto the seabed. Hilarious.

Then, dressing up for the Halloween party at the wind. I went as a pumpkin. So orange!!! Am still finding orange in my ears and elbows and fingers etc, even after 3 showers!!! It was a genuinely hilarious evening, and a brilliant way to end a very stressful few weeks. The best bit was that a lot of people didn't recognise me for a while (mainly till I opened my mouth and started talking!!)

After the weekend I have until Wednesday to chill out (mostly do some marking), and maybe meet with people here about my own research, and then I am finally flying back home. Hoorah!!!! I am so excited, because apart from very flying visits in-between my crazy schedule, I feel like I haven’t really been home since the beginning of September, and even then I was only home for 3 weeks. Cannot wait for English winter (I know I won’t be saying this in a week or two, but for now, I’m looking forward to it!!) and proper roast dinners, and having the fire and heating on. Yes!

Hello Hawaii

Why did I not notice on my flight itinerary that my flight from London to LA was going to be TEN AND A HALF HOURS LONG! Seriously did not know this before I got on the plane and they announced flying time. Not happy. Already got up at 5.30, and been travelling since 6am. Time for a coffee and buy a book before getting on the plane. Needless to say, I read the entire book on the flight, and still had a few hours at the end in which to try and entertain myself. Eventually I found Sudoku on the “in-flight games” section on the little entertainment screens. That kept me amused for a while. Didn’t have long in LA, just an hour and a half or so, during which time I managed to spill a Starbucks frappucino all over myself (and the hallway floor in the airport). Error. LA to Honolulu was another 5 and a half hour flight, and then a shuttle bus to the hotel. By this time it was about 9pm Hawaii time, or 10am the next day UK time, and hadn’t really slept at all. Kept falling asleep on the shuttle bus and was fairly worried I was going to miss my stop, until I realised that our hotel was at the “end of the line” for the shuttle bus. 27 hours of travelling in total.

Bus pickup at 8am the next day for the first day of the conference – 4 cups of coffee consumed by 10.30am. Actually a very useful conference/workshop as it turns out which was good. Conference dinner on the first night, at which I fell asleep at the table. Not cool. Extremely jetlagged. Went out for sushi the next night, I had garlic Ahi yum yum yum. Conference finished on the Thursday, with enough time for me to do a 50minute run before dinnertime. Walked down into Waikiki to get a coffee and then back to the hotel to do some work for my upgrade presentation when I got back to the UK.

Managed to wangle a few days extra, so had Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning as holiday time. Spent Friday morning working, and then went to the Honolulu Zoo :) and whilst I was there of course I took tonnes of photos. It’s actually quite a good zoo, the only thing I didn’t like was the smallness of the tiger enclosure. Big cats should have big enclosures so they can run around and stretch their legs. (Oh, and shave-ice is the best thing ever - shaved ice, with syrup on it..... mmmmmmmm)

After that I spent an hour or so on the beach outside the hotel, went for a swim a few times, and generally just chilled out. Little bit more work after that, and then out for dinner with a friend in Hawaii. Unfortunately was so tired that I was very antisocial and didn’t really make the most of the night! Another friend was staying too, so in the morning we caught a cab back into Waikiki and did the Diamond Head crater hike. Awesome views from the top, although it was already getting pretty busy when we were there.

Afternoon was a trip to the North shore with our friend John and his lovely lady friend Abby for them to do some surfing, and for Sarah and I to soak up some sun :) then to a party in Waimea Bay once John had dropped Sarah at the airport, just the most amazing sunset I think I’ve ever seen, and such a perfect place – pool, hammock between trees, pagoda-type thingy with a bench under it, and waves rolling in past the rocks into the bay.

Sunday morning we mainly spent plebbing around the house, did a bit more work, then went out to a sushi bar for some lunch, before they took me to the airport. Then began the long haul home, 8 and a half hour flight to Chicago, 3 hours in Chicago O’Hare airport, and then a 7 and a half hour flight back to Heathrow, a two hour wait for my National Express coach, and then a 80minute coach journey back to Southampton. Greeted by the news (at 2.30am) that my car was leaking petrol everywhere, and I needed to catch a taxi home from the bus station instead of being collected. I have never been so pleased to crawl into my own bed.