Pre-graduation things

Although I have graduated before, I never attended a graduation ceremony. For my Masters I had to defend my thesis publicly, wait for half an hour, and then received my official paper. No gowns involved. This time it is going to be a whole other kettle of fish. Never knew there were so many rules in relation to academic dress! And every uni has their own gowns. Although I really like the red ones, ours are the yellow/gold ones on the right. Including the baret (cool!). They cost a bomb, so it really is a matter of thinking about how sure I am about continuing to work in academia. Must say that of all the disparate jobs I had, working at a university suits me best and I like it best too. So maybe it is a good investment to get my own one? Even if it is not red?
Anyway, other things that needed attention but have all been taken care of are printing and binding of thesis and buying tickets for guests to the graduation, which takes place in Parliament House. Great location! Only 6 weeks to go ...

New beginnings

Periods of self doubt on the way have not stopped me from pressing on with the PhD thesis. And it paid off, cause I have actually passed! From 28 Sep 2011 I can finally call myself Dr. Which has reminded me of a very old joke. A guy gets introduced to a woman at a party as 'Dr. Chambers'. The woman straight away launches into a long description of all her physical ailments, ranging from headaches to hemorrhoids. The guy interrupts her with the words "Sorry, but I have a doctorate in economics." "Oh," says the woman. "What do you think should I buy shares in AWB or not?"

Post-thesis

Yes, after months of too hard work I actually managed to get the thesis submitted. So while waiting for the results I am trying to adapt to post-thesis life. It's kinda weird. After 3 years of being mainly in the role of student, all of a sudden I have to assert myself again as the professional person I was pre-thesis. Realise I actually do know what I'm talking about when it comes to, say, teaching or management or communication or road safety. I am not dependent on any supervisor's opinion, instead I can give my own. Without referencing anyone else. Will take some getting used to I guess, but must say I am beginning to enjoy it. Bring on the new projects! :-)

Nightly adventure

My whole life I have been waking up frequently from terrible nightmares, often about choking, getting no air and drowning, or about someone actively trying to strangle me to death. Last year I found out that I suffer from sleep apnea during REM sleep, so that explained a lot. I was actually choking, no wonder I had nightmares all the time! They have invented a lovely machine to prevent this choking routine, and for the last months have been sleeping like I should have all the time: for hours on end, nice deep sleep, no scary dreams. Bliss! Until last night I woke up from an unpleasant dream, and found that the machine was not working. In fact, nothing was working, we had a power outage in the middel of the night. Crap!

Here in Oz the power board is always outside of the house. Yeah, funny, and no idea why really. But it meant that we had to go out into the pitchblack night (where is that full moon when you need it?), armed with a handy headlight (sometimes it pays of to be outdoorsy people) to figure out what happened. Unfortunately the nightly temp had dropped from 30 degrees the night before, to only 9 last night. It felt freezing, probably due to our being scantily dressed. Anyway, could not solve the problem. My heroic husband braved the cold and stayed with the power board, while I unplugged everything in the house. Still not solved. After half an hour we ended up with switching off a whole power group, hooking up the fridge with a very long power cord to the only working power plug, and going back to bed. Where it took about an hour to fall asleep again. Without my lovely snoozer machine. So had a totally awful night sleep.
Sparkie has been in already and could not find anything wrong really. Keep fingers crossed for tonight.

Summer in Oz

We're in the midst of summer. It is dry, stinking hot, with a fierce wind blowing. Still at least a month to go. This year we (or at least I) suffer from an explosion of midges (which we never had before). I found myself allergic to them, resulting in massive bumps after being bitten, which then burst out and ooze yukkie stuff for hours. So what else is there to say about it. Nothing much really, although that may be due to me suffering from brain melt. Gosh, I really really dislike summer in Oz.

Wrinkles and stuff

When we moved from Europe to Australia, I had to get used to the intense dryness here. In summer a humidity of 15% is not unusual, although the last year has been quite wet so far (and we're in a dry part of the country!). Anyhoo, my hair and skin needed some acclimatisation time. And different products to keep the wrinkles at bay. Thanks to my Ozzie cuz, I discovered Jurlique, an all natural biological non-chemical yadda yadda yadda brand of skin care. Quite expensive to buy, but then again it lasts a long time. Most of their stuff smells deliciously and it feels nice too. Wrinkles still pretty minor, so all good. However, yesterday put a little pump of 'purely age defying facial serum' on my finger and all of a sudden it struck me that it looked ridiculously like ... well, there is no better way of describing it than, uh, sperm. Yikes! They surely wouldn't have, would they???

Not that I'm the one to cast a stone

When I went randomly through blogs (in hopes of finding something fun, entertaining or interesting), I was amazed about the enormous amount of journals out there on the wwweb that have not been updated for months or even years. What happened to these people? Did they die? Did they just turn a new leaf, never to look back? Would you not delete your blog then? Are they still planning to blog again 'some day' when they will have time? I reckon we need a blog graveyard, with neat little headstones, for everyone to visit when in need for melancholy.

I think I can spot the exit

Have been wandering through the labyrinth for quite a while now, but it lookes like I can spot the exit. Just a few twists and turns (or so I hope) before submission of my thesis. However, hope to stay into academics, so decided to take up my blogging again. Just because it is so much fun to write in English (or should I say it gets more difficult to write in Dutch?). Anyhoo, post no. 1 is done. Only a matter of 'keep at it' now, both for the thesis and the blog. :-)