PhD proposal FINALLY approved!

It has been a long one month since my PhD proposal presentation. It turns out that my committee are not the most well versed in microbiology, hydrodynamics, nor coral biology. I respected their wishes to certain changes in the proposal. My reasoning is that they probably seen enough PhD students to know what they are talking about. However, there are some points which I was very clear that I am not going to change, and I have the full support from my supervisor, co-supervisor and microbiology-advisor. Today, received this email, and now, I can start working on the fun stuffs!

"Dear Sonny

The SoE PGRC has now considered your revised PhD proposal and consulted with your main supervisor (Paul Kench).

I am pleased to inform you that the committee is happy with the modifications made to the proposal.

You will need to submit the proposal, together with the formal endorsement of your supervisors, when your provisional extension expires.

Best of luck with the next steps of the research Sonny!

Anthony"

Happy Thanksgiving

Today was a really busy day! First we made plans on what we are going to do with the van - both interior and exterior. There will be some painting, some carpeting, sawing and nailing.

Then, we planted some herbs ...

Herbs for the summer

Then there was Thanksgiving dinner. As it is almost impossible to get turkey in New Zealand, we decided to replace it with duck. On the menu, there is roasted duck. mashed potatoes and gravy from the duck. And the very delicious green bean and french onion casserole (made from scratch!). Hannah is the cook, and I helped out with the chopping, cleaning etc. Jet and Lilith got to have the duck's head and the legs for snack because Hannah refused to cook anything that can "stare" back at her :)

Jet and Lilith following everywhere, hoping for another snack

Hannah busy cooking

Thanksgiving spread...

Roast duck

Green bean and french onion casserole

Hannah is also very excited about the duck fat which was left from roasting the duck.. she has great plans for it!

Hannah excited about the duck fat

 Finally, after all that stuffing, there is dessert - pecan rum banana bread! The day ended with red wine in fancy giant bordeaux style glasses which we got free of charge with shopping coupons from the local supermarket.... and a beautiful sunset.

Pecan rum banana bread

Sunset

Goodbye UFO car

Three good long years

Growing oyster mushrooms

During the last BIOSCI 102 lab, we had the students perform an experiment on the growth of oyster mushrooms with recycled grounded coffee. After the semester, there were still a lot of mushroom spawns left. Thus, I took some home, and conducted my own experiment. I cultivated the mushrooms spawns in 3 different substrates - grounded coffee, grounded coffee with pumice, and grounded coffee with dried grass. The result is that mushrooms in the grounded coffee mixed with pumice substrate grew the fastest, followed closely by the mushrooms growing in the grounded coffee mixed with dried grass substrate. Mushrooms in the grounded coffee substrates only started to grow pin-heads after 3 weeks. Besides helping with the syllabus (this is a new lab in BIOSCI 102... never conducted before!), the good thing is also we now have mushrooms for dinner! Yay for Science.

(left) grounded coffee only (middle) grounded coffee with pumice
(right) grounded coffee with dried grass

Adult oyster mushrooms ready to be picked
in a couple of days!

Pin-heads

Adult oyster mushrooms

Do you really want to know "How am I?"

The other day,I bumped into a fellow PhD student (who shared the same room as me) along the corridor. He asked "How are you?", and I starting spilling that I am feeling tired and I am stressed about my research etc. etc...which lasted a whole few minutes! He smiled and said that was a new response...he usually get a generic response "I am good,how are you?".... I replied.."Oh! I though you really want to know how's my day!"

This morning I talked to Hannah about this incident, and realized not everyone wants to know how you are when they asked you that question! This is especially true with kiwis! The other day, I ran into my boss at the entrance of the HSB building, and out of politeness, she asked how's my day going?....and again, I started a whole spill of how disappointing are the students in the lab etc. etc.... And suddenly, I caught her micro-expression in between that polite,accommodating smile..she must be thinking "OMG! Why is he telling me how his days is?"

Why do people ask how's your day when they don't really mean it!?... I usually just say "Hi" and pass them by. And when I ask them how's their day, I really want to know HOW'S THEIR DAY!... I make sure they tell me the good, the bad and everything...I make sure I have time to listen to how's their day going!....Sign... people...