Trip to the Beach

Ok, admittedly this is a little while ago now, but I've been rather busy. The maths is beginning to get somewhere, slowly but surely and the Tutorials are creating a bit of work, trying to find Tutors for missing courses and so forth. All a bit hectic. Hence, just doing Blog now.

The photo above is from a little seaside trip last Sunday, helpfully was able to take one of the city buses across town and had a wonderfully sunny day to enjoy paddling in the Pacific for the first time. While I realise that it's not been to warm up North, if it's any consolation, there's an Autumn chill beginning to creep in here. Windy today, not much sign of the warm spell from the start of the week.

Still, another picture of the beach:

and one of the Pacific:
Incidentally, a picture of George St, one of the radial shopping streets from the town centre, called the Octagon. You can see the hard covers above the shop-fronts to keep off rain, running the whole way along the street from shop to shop. Very good idea.

Other eventful things this week? I met a Kea, the world's only alpine parrot, which came up and chatted to me as I walked past the Botanic Gardens' aviary. Surprisingly large.

Other than that, a fun evening on St Patrick's Day at the local Irish pub, 'The Bog' which had good live music and my first taste of Guinness since leaving the fair isle as well as a good night last night out for a friend's graduation drinks. Though a rather drunk guy I didn't know informed me that he didn't like my new haircut, which made me glad I'd only spent $12 on it (~4.50). I'll not post a photo for the moment.

Of course, the fairly significant news is that my second PhD tranche has arrived, the first one not to immediately disappear into bills. If you are planning to take a scholarship here, be aware that you'll have to confirm your start date on arrival and you can pay fees either from the 1st of the current month or of the following month. As scholarships are also tied to this, you get the choice of having two months scholarships close together, or having to wait until during the following month for your first one but as scholarships run for 36 months, it means one less at the end, bringing you up to the end of summer, when it may be rather useful!

Update: Actually, Greg (one of the lovely people in the SCR who is studying English Lit) suggested going for a quick drive this afternoon and we went out to the Peninsula & got some photos!

Here's one down the Harbour (in which you can see my cheap hair cut, oh well):
You can see by the colours in the water how shallow it is. In the time we were up there (less than half an hour) a sandbar had turned into an island with the tide going out.

So there you go, not much general information, but some pictures. I hope you've all had good weeks and if you get a chance to drop a wee line, it'd be great to hear from you on the far side of the world!

Phil