O.O

Things have been breaking apart since I came back from the trip.

1. My chair -> one of the legs just broke off. But I still can support myself on it.

2. The wardrobe in general -> Handles are getting lose.

Not sure why though but I guess my stuff shows the durability of the things around here. LOL

Reflections of the Albany Field Trip

I just came back from a 5 day field trip in Albany. This trip was part of the unit I was taking and I really enjoyed the experience. It was hard and the workload from this is intense. Day after day, we travel around to different places to look at the different rock outcrops. These outcrops do have a story to tell about the history of the place. For example, the Stirling Ranges has the rock age of 2,000 million years old. But the geology and the lithology of the place does not suggest that there were biological lifeforms. More information is needed to support that hypothesis. We could only spend 1 morning at the place due to time constrain and a tight programme.

I remember one of the church members (who is a retired geochemist) told me that as you study geology, you must be prepared to work alone most of the time. Only then, I do know what does that mean. You go around, looking at outcrops and record your observations. These observations are true as they become the data that would support your future hypotheses of the area. If you have people working with you and they jump into interpretations. By hearing their conversations leads to a distortation in your understanding of the lithology of the place.

Part of the error lies within me as I did felt inadequately prepared for the trip. My understanding of geology is limited and I do have limitations in my observations as well. The only thing I could do is to perhaps train on my observations to record as much detail as I can. (Details such as grain size, grain orientation, minerals present (due to cleavage or twinnings), clast or matrix supported rock, differentiate between mafic and felsic streams, bearings of joints/lines of weaknesses and so on..) It is quite a handful to have record as much data as possible but I wish I could have taken some samples back for further examination.

I do notice a sharp contrast with a PhD student and a first year undergraduate student. The PhD student works alot faster than us as they have the experience. Even if we carry the same gear as them, they are able to use the instruments more competantly than us. I too realise that even we think we are professionals in this area, there will be others who are better than us. From that lesson, I understand the mentality of having a teachable spirit and a humble heart. I just hope that I did not give that impression that I had a closed up mind. My lecturer said that if we have a fixated mind to a particular hypothesis, we are not studying science at all.

So much to do but we do need to start somewhere. Novice first, professionals later.

A tip about keeping your neck flexible

Have you been staring at the computer for too long?

Try the following:

1) Bend your neck to your right or left

2) Hear a nice *crack* at your neck*

3) Heave a sigh of relief

4) Do your neck exercises by doing neck rotations

5) This only takes 1 minute of your time. :)

Cheers.

Happy Birthday Darling

Well, one of the times that I shall just dedicate a post about you. :) You are now 'legalised' and welcome to the realm of being an adult. Have a smash on the day and you can only turn 18 once.

Hope you like the gift which should be flying towards Melbourne at the moment. :)

Have fun and God Bless you!

Countdown to Melbie

I shant need to say much about this. I think I can wait.. no I cant. Can time pass a bit faster for a while and be slower when Im there?

MP3 Playlist for the family blog

I have always wondered how people put music onto their blogs. I asked one of my friends named Angel and she told me how to do that. Now I can start to finetune the family blog after receiving comments. :)

Thanks Angel. :)

3 weeks of Holiday left

What have I been doing these few weeks besides playing, sleeping and slacking? Have I done anything productive these few days?

Well, doing my disciple readings is just one of them. But also, you have the time to take stock what really happened over the past few months. I visited the Canning students to 'disturb' them and encourage them to keep on going. At the back of our minds, we thought, we were like that just now. University is great but I do think that Foundation year was even better.

The days of Vickery house was full of fun and sadness. There are occassions that we just go completely nuts. This is just one example. When we were preparing for our End of Year exams, we just didnt have the mood to study. So.. this is what we did. I went over to Oliver's and Edward's unit to play some Maplestory private server. Guess what time we slept? I slept at 4am and the physics paper was just a few hours away. The rest played till the sun rose up. I am not sure whether we can do that again but the experience makes us laugh.

For those who still have exams, just do your best. It will end by the time you know it. :)