Stuffy, snuffy, snorty

Well, there goes the weekend plan of going shore diving today. It was the most beautiful day of the whole 2 weeks! No rain, great sunshine, slightly warm (for winter at least), and the water is so calm - there wasn't any slight of wind. However, here we are at home, both of us sick... the main culprit are as always the students, then passing the virus to me, and finally to Hannah. So, instead of diving, we are at home, being miserable. At least, I do not have the excuse of not able to find time to BLAST my bacteria sequences on ncbi (National Center for Biotechnology Information) website.

This month (May) is going to be a busy month with working on two weekends of field trips, tutoring and demonstrating for first year labs, writing papers, analysing data, and preparing for the research trip to Taiwan in June.

Time flies by really fast, and it is already 2nd week of May. I will be leaving for Taiwan again in a month. This time, I will be presenting in the Asia-Pacific Coral Reef Symposium 2014 conference, as well as working on the last field experiment. There are quite a few things to be done on this trip, that I doubt I will be able to finish everything before I need to come back to New Zealand in July. My original plan was to ensure that this June trip would be the final research trip to Taiwan, but I am predicting that I may need to visit Taiwan again in December.

Hannah got an offer for a new position in University of Auckland. Congratulations to her! She will be the online coordinator for  the first year Biochemistry course. Although the position is only part-time, adding on to her responsibilities as tutors, marking for test papers, she is expecting a busy half year ahead. I will let her post her experience of her new position herself sometime later once she got settled in.

Is it spring already?

[Updated] Photos of the newly-bloomed orchid!

Hannah and I have been really sick since last Friday. The cold that had been going around the university finally caught up with both of us. Although these two weeks is the mid-semester break, we still have marking responsibilities. Therefore, it really sucks to be sick, and face that huge pile of unmarked scripts.

It seems that Spring is here! Again! Time just slips by. There is supposed to be a nasty cold storm coming through today, which will make it feel like mid-winter again, but we have warmer days to look forward to. The other day, I noticed there is a small bud on the grapevine - which is definitely a sign of spring coming. The orchids are blooming really nice this year as well. It has been dormant for two years. I fragged them two years ago, and I think it takes time for them to recuperate. I think it's time to get some nice terracotta pots and bring these nice flowers indoors :)

Crappy on a nice weekend

Finally after seemed like-a-forever streak of rainy days, we have a great weekend with lots of sun. The weather is still cold, we already had the fire started early in the morning. However, instead of spending the day out, I am down with a flu, and lost my voice as well :(

At least, Hannah, Jet and Lilith got to enjoy a lazy last day, minus me "ordering" them around :P