Saturday, February 05, 2005

Bit of an Update

I've spent 10 weeks in Palmy now with two to go thankfully they were broken up by the two weeks of Christmas holidays. A very nice two weeks they were giving me a chance to catch up with many of you. Up to the point where in 14 or so days i was in Chch I think I spent 4 evening's at home. :-)
Any way got back up here on the 9th of January and started work again the next day. That week wasn't so good, with the whole week spent trying to get thing's working again after the PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) A rather cool technique) stuffed up after testing the various components which are used we finally found that the Primers had done something silly over the two week break. Since then things have worked all right. I got to spend quite a bit of time designing some more primers for different Phage gene's to extend the testing which as quite interesting and introduced me to some very nice Internet Bioinfomatics resources.
Any way with work going ok again it was back to things as normal. After work spent a fair bit of time playing Rome: Total War (single player) and UT2004 Multiplayer as Chris another chap from chch who was staying at the same place I was had brought his computer up after the holidays. UT2004 Invasion Mode with instagib is a lot of fun.
In the second week back I finally turned 21 not really sure what to think of that getting older but also getting to 21. That week end was a long one as the following Monday was the local anniversary day. So I hoped on a bus to New Plymouth getting there 11pm on the Friday night. The trip was boring and the bus pretty much empty except for what appeared to be a number of Navy and Army Cadet's. After it got dark things improved though as the sky was fairly clear and the stars looked brilliant!
Got to New Plymouth and walked from the bus stop to Nana's with dad who'd flown up for a week's holiday while leaving mum to run the shop. Always special being in New Plymouth in mid to late January as me and Nana have the same birthday and my youngest brothers birthday is 2 days after mine and Nana's. So spent the weekend with Nana and Dad. On the Saturday I managed to get out to Cameron's (see links) family farm for his 21'st and on Sunday the 3 of us went out to my Uncles place for a big semi birthday lunch for me and Nana. Went back to Palmy mid afternoon on Monday after Cameron had dropped around for lunch for a chat.
The next weekend (last weekend) I finally had to move out of the Massey Cottage where I'd been staying so moved to my second cousin's place on the far side of town. It's now a 25min bike to work but the the 10m pool my cousin's have makes up for that, as do the meals. Also that Saturday evening a group of us from work went out to a maize horror maze 30mins out of Palmy. Nice clear night with lots of very well dressed up monsters wandering through the maze scaring the people going through it (undead, ghoul's, Butcher, Crazy clown's, Guy's with working Chainsaws etc, the chainsaw chap was probably the most disturbing I thought he'd walk up to you rubbing his face over your clothes sniffing muttering comments about you smelling nice etc then let rip with the chainsaw.). We split up into groups of 4 with a mix of guys and gals. The gal's screamed quite impressively when the monsters jumped out on them (probably why the actors all targeted them). A lot of fun that. Went clubbing after that finished an interesting experience seeing I've never bothered to go before.

Any way this last week I've been mainly working on the presentation I need to give for my project. Ten minutes to explain what I've been doing and what use it is to Fonterra then five minutes of questions. I've pretty much got mine done and will be speaking second on Monday so hopefully it'll go well.

Well thats what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks hope your all having a good time where ever you are.

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