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It's now (just) April 26th. Just four more months here in Australia. It's hard to believe how quickly the time has gone by, how much I've done, and how much I've changed. Don't worry, this isn't one of those soul searching posts.

It's Passover, for those who didn't know, and I woke up this morning (the 25th) and spoke to my mom's side of the family for a while. (And a shoutout to Dan Lange for being my brother). It was sad in some ways that I wasn't there to celebrate it for the 2nd year in a row (well, technically the 6th, but at least the previous 4 I was in the same country). As much as I love things down under, a large part of me is ready to move on with my life. I'm going to miss the people here and Sydney itself tremendously, but I think it's time. I do still have to finish up my program though, and get what I came here for, but I know the next few months will fly by.

On a related note, we are all saying our goodbye's to Sherlee now. She leaves on Wednesday for good, so we've spent the past few days/weeks cramming in everything we can. Peruvian and Zellini's on Saturday, Schnitzl at Joe's on Sunday, and Kingsford Chinese Resturant (KCR) on Tuesday. I also took a break from studying today to see Three Dollars with Sherlee and her sister at Paris Cinema in Fox Studios. Not to get too off topic, but the movie reminded me of Waxwings by Johnathan Raban in a number of ways. It was well done, and really enjoyable, but not really an uplifter.

The rest of the day today has been spent studying for my exam tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get it done without too much hassle, and make some progress on my lab work this week as well. Before I know it the semester will be over, so I better enjoy the rest of my time here, and then get on enjoying the rest of my life.
12:15 AM 1 comments

 
This past weekend Lisa and I had a sleepover. It was one of those ideas that comes up in a conversation at some point and decides to take on a life of its own, culminating in a conglomeration of food, friends, and romantic comedies. At around 9pm on Saturday people started arriving, and most brought with them chips, dips, cookies, ice cream, beer, wine or some other yummy morsel.

Over the course of an hour we had a dozen or so people all ready for a night of fun show up. Jeff and I ran out to grab some pizzas (ah mccains) and we spent the next few hours talking and listening to readings from the quintessential sleepover magazine, Cosmopolitan. We also got to devour Lisa’s amazing 7-layer dip and Sherlee’s macadamia chocolate chip cookies.

To decide what movies were to be watched, we ended up having a secret ballot, whereby everyone put their top 3 choices on a slip of paper and the votes were tallied. By the votes, we should have watched Star Wars: Episode 2, Suddenly 30 and Meet the Fockers. Unfortunately, the DVD’s were not all happy, and a surprise post voting addition to the movie pool put The Princess Bride in the poll position. Before watching though, we first devoured a carrot cake I made the night before. With inch thick frosting that melted in your mouth, (and probably would dissolve your teeth if you kept it in there too long) it was a hit.

After The Princess Bride we put on 10 Things I Hate About You, followed by Suddenly 30 at about 4:30 in the morning. The tentative plan was to watch the sunrise after it was over, but by 6:30 no one was up for heading down to the beach for it. Another time though, I will definitely watch a sunrise over Coogee. Instead, we slept for a few hours before getting up and watching Meet the Fockers while eating pancakes made by Philipp. These were frying pan sized thin pancakes (somewhat like crepes) and we filled them with peanut butter and jelly and nutella and ice cream and chocolate syrup (not all at once though). Another scrumptious dish prepared by a partygoer.

All too soon it was 2 pm on Sunday and the remaining guests had to take their leave and go get ready for the upcoming week. A quick cleanup and the apartment was good as new, and I even managed to get some work done later that evening.
3:07 AM 1 comments

 
Anyone interested in finding out just the tip of the iceberg about what information is available for free about you on the internet should head over to Zaba search and put their own name in. At the very least it's amusing to see the phone numbers from 10 years ago that you've forgotten.

Although it may seem somewhat spooky that all the information is out there, for the most part it is just a matter of public records. Now though, instead of going to every county in the country to check if someone owned property there, you can just put a name or address in and seem what comes up. As always, its a balance between the potential for harm with the convenience of finding out information you need and finding people you thought were lost.
7:08 AM 0 comments

 
Just had to share the subject of today's most interesting piece of spam:

The desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with human flesh.
8:14 PM 0 comments

 
Lab is becoming more like a full time job now, leaving not enough time for everything else. I think that's a good thing in some ways - gives me more experience in the lab working on various projects and getting my hands dirty (in cow brain puree for instance). Yesterday and today I spent cleaning my 2 cow brains, picking out the blood clots and removing the grey matter before tossing them into a blender to make a nice strawberry milkshake looking thing. You wouldn't want to drink it though. Then one of the chemicals that I needed to add to the mixture was unavailable in the form I needed, so I had to make a small substitution with the result that I believe the final product won't be as antibacterial as expected - hopefully bacteria won't be growing tomorrow when I freeze dry it into a fine powder.
4:21 AM 2 comments

 
Lots of things should be written about here, I just never seem to get around to it lately. So, stories about Coffs Harbour, our Easter/Purim/Costume party, and the REM concert will get here eventually along with pictures as necessary. School starts again tomorrow, and maybe along with the hard work on that I'll be in more of a writing mood.
7:25 AM 0 comments