Seventy four samples!!

Fieldwork is all done and I'm heading back to Honolulu tomorrow. As the heading says, this was an extremely fruitful (and wet) field season - I'm now 74 water samples closer to finishing my thesis (not to mention the 24 samples I took while in Hawaii). Which of course also means that I have the lab time equivalent of 98 samples ahead of me. Wow.



If you look carefully you can see the sample labels: PH-08-74. SEVENTY FOUR!! This historical sample definitely merited a picture. I still can't believe that I actually managed to double the number of samples from last year!

All this sampling couldn't have been done without the drivers/field assistants here at NIGS (Nat'l Institute of Geological Sciences) at the UP (University of the Philippines) at Diliman; they are an incredible bunch of guys. Not only do they drive me from river to river in the insane Philippine traffic, they are also happy to stand in the middle of streams for half an hour while we take discharge measurements and then get straight back into the car and go on driving. They're real troopers, these guys!



This is William up to his neck in the Lauis River last year.

Things have gone a lot more smoothly here in the Philippines this time, as was probably to be expected given that when I went here last year I didn't know anybody and had no idea what to expect, whereas now I know quite a lot of people here and also the terrain (a big help when planning fieldwork...). I am very happy with what I accomplished here this time and I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes out of the water back in Ithaca. Oh, and I actually have a lab assistant this semester, whom I'll get to teach the analytical techniques and then have help me with the analyses. That's just too good!

Also, my coworker here is really interested in further collaboration and we're planning to sample over the course of the next year up to 8 streams in various locations around the country. That's really fantastic and I can see it leading to some further interesting work down the road.

So, in spite of my initial misgivings about this field trip I am now very happy with the outcome. Not only do I have a lot of what I hope are really good samples, I also have a nice feeling that my work is actually of interest to someone beyond myself and that I am beginning to become a part of the earth science community here, in whatever small manner that may be. That's probably the result of this trip that is the most beneficial to myself, psychologically speaking, because so far in my thesis work I've felt very isolated and it's been killing me. If I weren't as stubborn as a mule when it comes to my Ph.D., I would have quit a long time ago. Now however, I feel like I belong somewhere again, for the first time since I started my thesis work.

From the observation deck

My bank in Ithaca SUCKS. Do NOT under any circumstances do business with CFCU. Ever. I'm taking every last penny out of my accounts there as soon as I'm back in Ithaca. Just thinking about these people makes my blood pressure go through the roof.

Other than that, all's well in the Pearl of the Orient*. It's beginning to feel positively cozy to get into a tricycle, breathe some quality exhaust and bump your head in the roof about 10 times on the 3 minute ride from Philcoa to Makatarungan Street. Já, Manila er ágæt:



Tomorrow I'm taking off with Titan, the gentle giant, for some more fieldwork. This time we're going around Laguna de Bay and over the mountains east of the lake to Infanta. While we're there our lodging is at Titan's uncle's house. I'm excited about that, having never really been in a real Filipino home. Afterwards we're headed for two days in the Mt. Pinatubo area, returning only to deposit me on a plane to Honolulu. Amazeen how time flies when you're having fun. Which is what I'm doing (even if the morons at my bank tried their hardest to ruin my trip).

Am planning on a visit to Iceland this summer. I hope August works for people. While I'm there the plan is to attend the IAVCEI (International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior...) conference and say hi to some buddies there. My work hasn't much relevance to the topics of the conference but I can at least go there to observe... and to drink beer with fun people. That's the primary function of conferences anyway, right?

A hike would be nice too. Anyone up for doing Bárðargata with me??

* That's what they used to call Manila

Still on the road

Just a quick sign of life here, over instant coffee and spaghetti for breakfast. We're thundering through the Philippine countryside, sampling lots of rivers, measuring discharge with soldiers on their day off (and wearing only their underwear, or what looks like it anyway) towing us through the raging torrents and whatnot. Very exciting, all in all.

More later.

My winter days:

Family outing on the bay:



What is all this stuff???



My field assistant Boy works the crowd:



Right now I'm in Naga (you may want to consult Google Earth for this one) in a very spiffy coffee shop with free wireless (!!!), minimalist leather couches, Alicia Keys playing and sub-freezing air con. I might as well be in the USA. Except that outside, tricycles and jeepneys still rule supreme. All's going well and I'm having a really good time. How can it be otherwise, on a day when you got the honor of being the first white person a bunch of village children EVER saw?!?!

Fieldwork galore

The last few days since arriving in the Philippines have been busy. My adviser and I arrived in Manila on Wednesday afternoon and already by Thursday morning we were on our way to the Zambales mountains to sample some streams. Now it's 14 samples and many many hundred kilometers later and we're staying at this fancy schmanzy resort on the shores of the South China Sea (apparently in this neck of the woods the only places that have hot water are fancy schmanzy resorts on the shores of the South China Sea). It's been too busy to read email or anything, but I hope to be able to pick up the slack on Tuesday or Wednesday.

On the plane again

Finally on the beach!

Kiholo Bay, Haleakala Volcano

Headwaters of Waipi'o Valley

In Waipi'o Valley

Saddle Road

Fieldwork II

Fieldwork I

Leaving town

The trip starts tomorrow and I can't say that I'm ready. My flight out of Ithaca is at quarter of six in the morning, i.e. in six hours and a half. If I had any sense I'd be done packing and snoring in bed by now but instead I'm buying the fourth season of Grey's Anatomy on iTunes and syncing it to my iPod so that I have something to pass the time with while in the outland.

One thing that I'm glad about is that this will be my last field trip as a Ph.D. student. As exciting as field work is, I've had enough for now. All I want to do now is make enough sense of the data I already have to get my degree. I really don't want to spend months on end in the lab again, processing the samples I'll bring home from this trip. Guess I don't have a choice, though.

Ok, I'm off to Hawaii, then!

Sick

I am sick. Since Saturday morning. And I'm almost out of comfort food - the Lübeck marzipan I brought home years ago for my boyfriend who doesn't like marzipan at all.

Fortunately it's only Tuesday. Five more days to get well before I leave the continent.

New Years Resolution(-s)

I read somewhere that New Year's resolutions are bad for your health. Therefore, I didn't make any.

Or so goes my excuse. Honestly, I didn't make a single NY resolution. Is that bad?

Administrative assistant in the tropics

The New Year has taken off and looks set to be an interesting one. For starters, it's cold in Ithaca


and the ground is covered in snow. If that isn't a reason to party, I don't know what is!

As I may have mentioned before, my life as a grad student sometimes resembles that of a secretary or an administrative assistant more than anything. Sometimes I think that if I ever get this bloody degree, it should be in online shopping for airline deals (and dishwashing, let's not forget). I've spent most of today and yesterday shopping for airfares between Ithaca, Honolulu and Hilo, hunting down bargains on rental cars, and looking for hotels and applying for permits for lodgings in state parks. In between, I've been to the supermarket buying dishwashing gloves and brushes, so that I can continue the dish washing required for my research, and, erm, I also did some dish washing. Yes, science really is an uninterrupted string of landmark discoveries and intellectual bliss. Or not.

However, I'm not one to complain (ehemm...). From January 14th to 22nd, you'll find me on the Big Island of Hawaii. On the 22nd the dateline will be crossed, into the 23rd, on a Philippine Airlines flight to Manila. After three weeks of fieldwork on Luzon I'll return to Honolulu, spend 3 nights on O'ahu and then return to Ithaca on the 16th of February. This should be interesting. I'm especially excited about the days on O'ahu; they'll be all mine. North Shore, here I come!!

Yarn hike

As some of you may be aware, I'm a great fan of knitting and such. Yesterday I finally gathered the courage to make an inventory of my stash, i.e. my yarn collection. Guess what I found out: If all the yarn in my closet were strung out, one skein after the other, it would stretch for over 17 kilometers! I have a feeling I should be mildly embarrassed ;) but honestly, the more yarn in the apartment, the better I feel :)

In the upstate

Well well me, here I am in the upstate, having all but abandoned my loyal reader.

Where to begin? I'm downloading the second episode of the second season of Grey's Anatomy so you all will have to take second place once the download finishes. I have every intention of becoming a total GA fanatic and I think that some strategic planning might convert Shan too... he did watch 4 (yes, that's four!!!) episodes with me last night.

Anyhow. Christmas this year, spent in Delaware, was lovely. Highlights include a fancy Christmas party at the Whitham mansion (kind of a similar affair to the Lindal-clan get-togethers on Christmas Day that I like so much), Christmas Eve dinner at a steakhouse and an invigorating discussion about the death penalty and immigration with a staunch Republican over Christmas dinner. No, no one got hurt...

Coming back to Ithaca from Houston was also lovely, especially since a) I did not get thrown off an overbooked plane or fall victim to mindboggling delays and b) my luggage arrived safe and sound in Ithaca with me, all three pieces! I was flying US (Sc-)airways and therefore both a) and b) must be regarded as absolute miracles.

Gee, how exciting my life is! Stay tuned for the next installment!!

Heaven meets skyscrapers

Búin!

Phew. The presentation is done:


Am going home now, under strict orders to get some sleep:



Images shamelessly copied from here and here.

Polar news

The world's oldest polar bear was just found. Furthermore, my old buddy Jason Roberts was apparently involved in filming "The Golden Compass". Obviously, Svalbard (and everyone on it, dead or alive) still rocks!!

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain

Hah! Looks like I'll be able to sport my new wellies this week!!

Not resisting temptation

Why is there a Banana Republic store right next to my favorite (Starbucks) coffee shop?? This is what I came out with today...

And I hereby present...

... the worst-prepared presentation I've ever given!

Yesterday I gave a draft presentation to one of the groups I've been working with here at Shell. It was... to put things mildly... not well prepared. The reason: My project was changed a month into my internship and I completely (and utterly. And completely. And utterly) missed what was expected of me. In my naivité, I thought I was supposed to do and deliver one thing, whereas it turns out I was supposed to do and deliver that thing, and then all these other things as well. This is entirely my fault, for not communicating effectively with the people I'm working for and for not thinking carefully about things and asking myself questions such as: "Well, why would Shell be interested in this product if it's not accompanied by these other products?" But coming from academia, I'm trained to want to know all kinds of different things without always needing a solid reason for wanting to know them. Knowledge for knowledge's sake. I implicitly assumed that's what I was dealing with here. I wasn't expecting the Business Applicability to pop up. As I said, naive.

So. Now I have ... let me count... Saturday, Sunday and Monday to prepare for the Final Presentation. And a truckload of things to do before then, that I should have dedicated, say, 2 or 3 weeks to. And at the same time I'm so tired that I zombied around all yesterday afternoon and have spent most of today sleeping.

Well, what the hell. As my friend Paula says, you can't do any better than your best. And I'm too old for allnighters anyway :)

So, to kick off the flurry of activity that will surround me the next few days, I'm heading for a) Starbucks, for a coffee and a 5-pm lunch, and b) my LYS, where I'll meet the regulars over knitting and pizza for one last time. Mildly pathetic, that's me ;)

Dinner - exciting, huh?

Is this it???

One of many

On her way to work

Where the friggin' hell is that bus!?!

Downtown Houston from the bus stop

Booty from White Elephant part-ay

A different angle

Goin' to the Moon

It's bizarre to think that this thing took humans to the moon. Well, at least most of the way there:



According to reliable sources, when this thing took off it used 0.5% of all the power being generated on the entire planet at that particular moment:



Each of these engines is tall enough for me to stand inside it. Wow!

Long time...

.. no blogging here. Oh well, such is life.

So, what's been going on? First, my house has been Internet-deprived for the last week and I'm going nuts. Fortunately I can use my cell phone to read my gmail, but that's about the extent of my internet usage during the holidays.

Speaking of the holidays, I had a visitor over Thanksgiving week. My beloved boyfriend Shan came down from frosty Ithaca and we had a nice time. We went on a road trip to Austin where we had coffee at a sidewalk cafe while listening to a live country bluegrass band. We also went to the Johnson Space Center and visited the old mission control and almost froze our ears off in the cold (it was 11°C and windy in Houston that day). Last but not least we had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with my friend and co-worker Paula and her husband and our friends Patricia and Pascale.

Shan escaped the worst weather of the year by heading back to Ithaca on Friday afternoon. On Saturday it didn't really get light until ~2 pm, such was the heaviness of the clouds. It rained cats and dogs all day and all plans for outings were cancelled in favor of snuggling up in bed with books and knitting. The same applied, more or less, for Sunday.

And now, the last weeks of being an intern. Better roll up them sleeves...

6 pm

and I'm leaving work. It's been one of those days when all you do all day is sit in front of the computer with things happening veeeeerrrrrry slowly... but still happening.

Am headed for the first installment of the Hula program. I wonder what it'll be like. I have to admit I'm a little nervous. What the hell did I get myself into??

Update, 11/13 @ 1 am: Well, I got myself into some seriously sore butt muscles, that's what! Of course the class was fun. I learned to wiggle my arms very gracefully (ehemm...) and do a figure eight with my hips (in theory, at least). I also learned how to tell my lei that it's wonderful fragrance was coaxing the sun into shining on me. Is there anything not to love about this??

Turandot

Yesterday afternoon at my desk was spent listening to Puccini's Turandot on my iPod. Gee, I'm so cultured!

Penetration talk

Well well. All is well. Oil well, that is.

Funny how geologists like to penetrate things. Isn't there's something decidedly phallic about the whole drilling business:

"This was the first penetration of the Kimmeridgian in Alabama"...

Very phallic, I dare say.

Halloween and Hula

picture courtesy of about.com

My gated community is swarming with little princesses and Mickey Mouses and pirates and ladybugs and whatnot tonight. It's so CUTE!

I just signed up for a class in Hula and Tahitian dancing. Yay!!!! For an earlier hula-post (in Icelandic), see April 2nd 2005.

picture courtesy of Randy Jay Brown

Tonic and lime, please

This afternoon the group I belong to here at Shell had a little celebration, to which I was, naturally, invited. It was nice to get out of the office for a while and meet people in a relaxed setting. I had to go back to the office after this so I asked for tonic water with lime. My refill came from a different waiter and I think he may not have realized I originally only had tonic in there... after almost finishing the second drink I started to feel as if there was something stronger in there as well. Oh whatever. A free drink never hurt anyone. Ermmm....

Am at home, looking at and for data. How come that out of 35,000 data points, only 5 are relevant to what I am interested in??? It's not fair!

The sheriff and other downtown tales

Last night I worked until 7 pm, as I sometimes do. When I arrived at the parking garage to get my car, a sheriff sat on a chair in the elevator lobby, reading the evening paper. He got up as I was about to enter the elevator and joined me, explaining that he was there to protect people like me from whatever might happen in a downtown Houston parking garage on an early Friday night. He walked me to my car, made sure that I got safely under way, and then presumably returned to his post to wait for the next person to protect. Remarkable, huh?

On the way to the car I asked him about the crime rate in downtown Houston. He said that in the last few years it had improved dramatically, since the authorities had relocated most of the homeless people to south of downtown. I live south of downtown and I can attest that he's right, that's where the homeless hang out. So, the problem hasn't been solved, it has only been moved places. Beautiful governance, right?

I don't drive to work every day. I am lucky that the bus stops at the nearest corner from my house (well, the gated community in which I live these days) and it takes me to within a short distance of work. Of all the hundreds of people I have seen in the bus, only two were white and they didn't look like they had a comfy bed to rest in at night. The rest are overwhelmingly black, with some Asians and Hispanics thrown in the mix. Most of them don't look like they hold profitable jobs and some look like they haven't held any kind of a job in years. Quite a few give me surprised stares, as in "what's a white, well dressed woman doing here??".

This is all pretty mind-boggling. While I do know that the US aren't exactly setting the world standard for social equality, I don't know that I was prepared to find myself living in a fancy house in a fancy community where the inhabitants need gates and security guards to protect themselves from the poverty of the people around. Or that I would need police escort to get my car at night. Or that I'd be in a racially segregated bus. This reminds me a smidgen of what I've read and heard of Bogotá, what I've seen in Manila, even apartheid. It's disturbing, to say the least.

Mumínpabbi

	Hvem er du i Mummidalen?
	Mitt resultat: Mummipappa Du er Mummipappa! Du er en drømmer og du drømmer deg ofte bort og inn i eventyr. Du er også en håpløs romantikker.
	Ta denne quizen på Start.no

Via Laggablogg

Winter comes crashing in

The hard drive in my work computer crashed today. And winter came to Houston:

It rained all morning and the wind picked up during the afternoon, so much so that my fellow elevator travelers were discussing where on the 21st floor was the best place to feel the building swinging back and forth. On my way to the bus stop I sorely missed my new woolen coat. To keep warm I decided to walk to a bus stop two blocks further away than my regular one, and by doing so I almost missed the bus.

Then, there's Facebook. Instead of reading up some more on the biochemistry of biomarkers tonight, or even processing a set of raw data straight off the ion chromatograph which I've been putting off for a month now (no, it's really not that hard, I'm just colossally lazy when it comes to my Ph.D. project), I spent the evening on Facebook. Sad, really.

Houstonians

Houstonians ar the most friendly and easy-going lot I've met in a long while. I wonder if it is because most of them are Europeans?

*muhawhawhaw*

See, I'm evil. Anyway, my colleagues here in this massive, sprawling city are so nice! They make sure I don't have to eat my lunches alone. They come over and introduce themselves and offer help and assistance (and sound like they mean it). They invite me to their housewarming parties. They have lovely friends who invite me out to meet their friends. And the list goes on. Even on the bus, people are friendly and ready to chat.

I find all this rather wonderful, I have to say.

Currently making me happy:

My iPod, playing this and this and this and this.

Houston cont.

Wanna see the building I work in? Here it is, in as good a rendition as my cellphone camera can muster:

Then to the domestic sphere. Meet my new house mate, Rosie (Rosie does not like to sit still when someone is aiming a bizarre flat plastic object at her. She'd much prefer grabbing a taste of the plastic object):

Aren't they both adorable??

The office

Houston, TX

Yep, I'm here. Spent the weekend acclimatizing with my lovely boyfriend by my side. Started work today. Got stuck in traffic and the whole nine yards. This is amazing!

More later. A book on basin modeling is waiting to put me to sleep. I am tired... zzzzz.... zzz... zzz.. .. z. . zzzzzzzz

Survival exercise

Today has been all about survival. More later.

You may not believe this:

It's warmer in Ithaca now than in Houston. I'll be damned.

Instrument update: The computer finally started cooperating last night after I had posted about my troubles here. The samples are running smoothly. If the rest of the run continues so nicely I'll have all the analyzes I need by midnight. Aaahhh.

I guess it's a weird coincidence, but my mom and sis, my friend Erna, and myself are all moving places this week. Personally I am mildly freaking out about all the undone stuff. Alkalinity titrations, for example. Well, at least I got the issue with the company rental car sorted out and I have a place to stay when I get to Houston. From now on it's become a question of how much work stuff I forget to bring along (yep, the plan is to work on my thesis in my spare time... or so my adviser wants... and I'd do it if the word self-discipline existed in my vocabulary) and not forgetting to take the stuff I can't bring on the plane to the UPS store for shipping to Texas.

But this is peanuts compared to the other moves taking place. My mom has a whole home to move from one house to another. Phew. Erna is not only moving houses but also from one country to another. And as if that weren't enough, she's defending her Ph.D. thesis in the middle of it all. Phew again.

Instrument massage

'Allo allo!

erm... the "save now" button is growing as I type. No shittin'. Ok, it's stopped now.

Again, I'm enjoying a full evening in a lab, massaging a stubborn instrument into cooperation. And I even forgot my knitting at the office! The stubborn instrument is actually a laptop PC that remotely controls the ion chromatograph (IC) I'm trying to use... and the friggin laptop is so old and slow that it can't handle anything... even gave me the blue screen of death once... and I'm having to shut it down and restart it over and over again... and voila, the clock went from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm, and still no success (or dinner!).

Hopefully this will be over soon. I have the Fifth Element at home and need to watch it by tomorrow (I know it's supposed to be crappy, but I need to (finally) find out for my self). I also have to start packing for Houston and throw my dirty clothes into the washing machine. And most of all I have to run these samples!! Wish me luck, please.

Mr. Squirrel

As seen on my way to work this morning.

Lunch of the week

Under all this yummy salad (with cherry tomatoes and roasted pine nuts) lie hidden the remains of yesterday's dinner: Organic whole-wheat fettucine with Icelandic smoked salmon in cream-dill sauce. Namm!