Snorkelling South Coast

Just been snorkelling along the South Coast. We thought we would test the water (and my new wet suit). It was pretty marvellous.

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Nettles alone thinking in the Lab

Here is an interesting thing. I am a scientist. Most of my uni life I spend in the lab or preparing for things in the lab. I never really wanted to work in a lab, I wanted to be out and about doing sciency stuff but unfortunately the cutting edge of science inevitably involves some fair amount of lab work. It even sounds boring writing about it, but that I am in the chemistry lab taking pictures of my little bugs I thought that I would stick one on my blog. Its pretty impressive. Its about 250µm, that 0.025cm! These things are tiny creatures and yet within their fossil bodies lies an amazing array of infomation about the climatic pasts. These bugs which can be millions of years hold are like time keepers to another world that hosted a completely different planet earth as we know it. Unlocking the secrets of these past environments allow us to have a glimpse, albeit given our limited scientific knowledge and interpretation, at what the earth was like and how is has changed. More importantly we can try and understand what was driving these changes and for how long. Apart from being able to go back into a phone box and travel in time a la Dr. Who, there is no real way of knowing how reliable this information is, but we do have a vast suite of other proxy data and it seems to correlate pretty damn good. Whats gonna happen to Planet Earth in the future? Who knows, but we are undergoing the changes right now and it may or may not be too late to do anything about it. What I always wonder is that the projections that have been determined all somehow assume that the human race will somehow realise and adapt its behaviour in order to avoid a major catastrophe - CLIMATE CHANGE. The problem I have, whether we like it or not, the human race, if it continues to survive, will at somepoint have to face the fact that the planet will dramatically change. This is going to be in a long time I'll admit but its gonna happen, like the seasons will change and the moon will wax and wane, the future of the human race will depend on its ability to survicve the planet after it has managed to survive disentaglement between its own kind. Humans need to be at peace with one another before we can moe forward and truly relish this planet for what it is. A bugs life is far more simple. For mankind I fear the problems will remain as complex and deep rooted as it always has.
When you look for peace
then the peace lies within you
When you search for peace
then it is not hard to find
When you want to keep peace alive
then you allow white doves to fly over you
When you make peace with others
then the whole world live in your heart
When you let peace be in the world
then you live in wonderful world
When you allow peace flow around the world
then your hateness will go and love will flow
When you open the door for peace
then peace welcome to your lives.
Let the peace prevail in our wonderful world

Ravi Sathasivam / Sri Lanka

Winter Seasons, Cold and Rain.

Its WINTER!! Brrrrrrr. Actually I am sat in the living room and the sun is shining on me and I am feeling pretty toasty. I know come the evening I will be freezing my icicles off and moaning that I am too cold and that NZ houses are crappy and we need more insulation and wood on the fire. Wood on the fire - WOO HOO we have a woodburner finally.
I must admit that the long exposure to lovely centrally heated houses of Europe has meant that the adjustment to NO heating whatsoever has been, how come one put this - IMPOSSIBLE! Although the woodburner does heat up the living room pretty good, the rest of the house is still -400C and whenever I need to go to pee/make a cup of tea/ find something...I have to prepare for the enslaught of the COLD.

I must say NZlanders are pretty tough cookies. For a start they don't moan about the cold much, you might get a comment from a passerby 'bit nippy tonight isn't it'. Translated to Netty language "its fuck*** freezing and if I stay out here another second I will freeze for the next 3 months and will have to be defrosted slowly in a giant fish tank like they did with that collosal squid at Te Papa museum some time ago. Never got to see that by the way....

Anyway.........I plan to get some new pictures up soon, of the bunnies Lolly and Wiggles looking all cosy on the rug next to the fire. And of some of the places we have visted in the last few months. We have been around but just too busy...

I had good intentions when starting this blog, so that the folks back home could login and have a nosey at what I have been doing. The problem is I have been too busy to update and the so called 'broadband' here is bloody slow and so uploading photos becomes a painful task. AND my laptop is still buggered. I'd better go now and do some work. Ah a scholars life is never easy..............

This is a picture of our friends from Paekakariki, Damien, Sylvia and Sorcha.

This is a fur seal that we spotted just chilling out at the car park!

Netster