catching up

Hey people, just a quick quick update from the City internet cafe in Hamilton. Im in Hamilton. I left Dunedin on the 17th December and drove up with Dan and Mike reeves, whom we piked up in Christchurch - where we stayed at the Brown's house. Then stayed a couple of nights in Wellington at Jacqui's house, where we played Tennis and Wii. Had dinner at Paul rodley's the first night which was great, went for a walk up Mt Vic. It was great weather, we had a great ferry crossing. On the ferry we bumped into Jain Tay and his family, and guess what Im on the same flight back to Dunedin as he is! I had a good sleep on the ferry! I should also mention I havent finished my thesis yet, so thats what I'll be doing for the start of 2007, since im back in Dunners on the 4th Jan. The second night in Wellington had dinner with lots of ex-dunedin people at a pizza place and then we looked at christmas lights on houses. We then stayed a night at Dans mates place in Palmy and watched 'The Departed' cause the movies only cost $8 there! i rate it 7.5 out of 10 and found it very entertaining though prob doesnt have much replay value. In Hamilton have just been doing Christmas/Birthday stuff, eatting and family and presents. Havent caught up with any Hamilton mates yet but will do that before i leave. Oh though i did see Roslyn and church on christmas eve. Hope everyone is having a good christmas and will have a good new years!

Wonderful small dots or dashes

I am thankful that keyboards have dots (Mac) or dashes (PC) on the F and the J. Often I take them for granted but how lost and how blind I would feel without them. They are my anchor, my lighthouse, they guide me through storms of words, and they make my sentences straight. I am grateful.

The never ending hardness

I know my last post was totally cold, and i did it on purpose, cause i didnt want to write about whats really going on inside of me and life. I didnt want to because im not that positive these days, and well i made a decision that i wasnt going to truly write about my self on my blog anymore. I thought i would just write about curious happenings that spark in my mind. But im violating that and now im just saying it like it is.

I have been finding things hard. And i want to be finished my masters thesis. I want to be free. I feel stalled and restricted, and i have for the whole year. Things have just taken soooo much longer than i anticipated, and i have so much still to do, and im going home in two weeks – by which time i want to be finished – but why do i think i can be finished then when every other deadline i have set has just turned out to be a joke. I have had great moments when i have really enjoyed the writing, though perhaps it is the idea of the writing i enjoy more, the theoretical – wow i get to do lots of reading and write a case for all my wonderful results and prove that they will change the world – wow what a great opportunity! and i would totally have enjoyed it more if i had of know it would take me 5 months to write. But who knows, perhaps i would have taken things to easy if i had set my self that long. In the beginning (of the writting) it was just hard to even look at my results because i felt that all they said was – your a failure! But my supervisor pulled me through that one and i like my results now :) Recently the challenge has been trying to understand the overwhelming quantity of literature relating to my topic, for example there are 8500 publications referring to E-cadherin, which is one protein i am studying, there are 17416 publications for Human papillomavirus, which is the virus im studying. Of course that can sound a bit misleading, im not gonna read even a fraction of those – i just read the new ones and the review articles, so that makes it easier (even so there has been 96 reviews on E-cadherin just this year!). Realistically i’ll prob have 100-200 citations in my reference section (at a guess). Things are progressing, but just super slow, i feel bad cause i keep telling my supervisor i’ll have various chapters finished by certain dates but i never do. Well, im not gonna be too hard on myself because its a learning process, this being the first thesis if have written, and i am happy with the work i have done – just not the time line or the process. And i dont want to be too negative cause well its just not helpful, and sometimes not true. Anyway just thought i’d be real with your face.