It’s been quite an eventful 3 weeks or so since my last update.
As the weather has started to slowly become a little warmer again (summer is on its way… damnit….) there have been a few BBQs taking place. CP was the first to kick it off with a lovely civilised session of drinks & nibbles by the river as the sun set before heading up to her apartment for a barbeque and more drinking. Karyn’s birthday also gave us another reason to celebrate and bunch of us made our way to her place in Holland Park for more drinking and over-eating. Great stuff.
Speaking of birthdays – Stewart’s was last week and he kindly organised a minibus (which Sarah drove and forfeited drinking!) to take a few of us to Mt. Tamborine where we had an excellent lunch, saw some stunning views, visited a distillery, a cheese makers, and a micro brewery which served some of the best beer I’ve tasted since I came out here. All in all it was a really good afternoon.
As for beer – Ben and Stewart invited me to join them in putting some homebrew together. So far we’ve bottled 23 litres of a pale ale, 23 litres of what looks to be a fantastic stout, and we have another 23 litres of an american style pale ale ready for bottling this coming weekend. I can see that the consumption of these beers is going to be detrimental to my weight loss regime…..
On that note – HOORAH! I’ve managed to make it to the 15 kg lost marker, which puts me at about 106 kg, down from 121 kg. For those of you still working in stones, that means I’ve lost just over 2 stone so far, down to about 16 stone 10 from about 19 stone! I hope to lose about another stone or so (bringing me down to the 100 kg mark) by the time I get home for Christmas 
It’s making me feel great though – I have all these clothes that I can fit into that I couldn’t wear before because I was too fat. On the flip side, I need a new suit…. the trousers of the one I have here are now MASSIVE because they were quite big to start with.
Now, unfortunately, even though I have done quite a lot lately, I’ve completely forgotten to take my camera anywhere. So the best I can offer is some pictures of some random bits I saw/made in the lab (click here for a pretty “round-bottomed flask tree” and here for a “root pattern” in my silica column) and some sushi that I made at home for my lunches. The sushi was really good actually, but it was more effort to make than it’s worth I think. I’ll probably just buy it in future!
Finally I’ve also started tutoring again at Uni. I managed to blag myself a “promotion” to a second year subject. It’s no extra pay, but the students are a bit better and the experiments are a bit more interesting. I also get to do some marking which means I can claim for some work done in my own time rather than it always intruding on my research time in the lab.
I think that’s all for now. Stay in touch people! I am gutted to be missing the 2001-2003 Univ Gaudy in a month or so, we’ll have to make sure we all meet up when I am back for Christmas instead.