Via Flickr:
I finally took the plunge (after a few months saving…) and got myself a car (call it an “advance” birthday present). I had planned to do so more towards the end of the month, but this little blue gem came along, and in my opinion it wouldn’t last long until it was sold.
Very, very basic – no electric windows, no central locking, no power steering, and a ridiculously small 3-cylinder, 973cc engine. But it does only have 23600 miles on the clock (about 45000 km for those on the other side of the Channel), not bad for a soon-to-be 14-year-old car! And it runs like a dream…
So, now, off to the beach, off to the river, off to somewhere remote – the possibilities are endless! (sadly, the money to pay for the petrol isn’t… but this is a very frugal machine, so it is not that bad!)
And now, I must arrange some time to write a proper blog post. But the endless pile of lab reports to mark is also begging for attention… bah! 😛
I finally managed to sweat quite a lot on my way up the hill! – until now the near-zero temperatures required a quite heavy coat to be worn every day, but if the weather stays like this I will finally be able to leave it at home, yay! 🙂
It is always nice to have a bit of a break from work, and have a nice time with good friends and great food! Around here we have Bank Holidays on both Good Friday and Easter Monday – even though I actually spent part of the break coding and fixing my ragged piece of software, I had plenty of stuff to keep me amused!
Starting with Saturday – we had the Spring ICC! I remember fondly the last year’s ICC – it was great fun, the weather was lovely and sunny and we had a really good time (also, it was my very first race! Well… not a “real” race, but still counts as one for me!). Err.. not this year!
Boathouse, 7:30 AM on Spring ICC day. Can you spot the snow flakes falling? (I should have used the flash!)
This year’s weather has been very, very disappointing (in fact, it actually snowed today, April 3rd! 😛 ), and the Spring ICC was no exception. We got out of the minibus in Plucks just to get greeted by a blizzard of snow gushing through the bus’ side door!
Gladly, it wasn’t like that all morning – there were periods of sunshine! – but I still raced under a bit of a blizzard on my first race (I raced twice, first on a single – ooh! – and then filling in a W4+ with another guy – there weren’t enough girls in the boathouse to have all-female crews, so we had to fill in for them! 😉 ). My time on the 1x was quite miserable – 4:06 for a <1k race!! – and, predictably, I came up last 🙂 . But then again, I don’t know how to go fast on a single, as I normally use them for leisurely “strolls” of 10k+! 😛
Having fun!! And at least I managed to keep the boat relatively balanced for the photo… (photo credit Ben Zeng)
Sadly, there was no barbecue this year, and we managed to finish the whole event quite early (probably the nasty weather contributed a bit to that!) – I was back at my place around 1 PM!
Easter lunch: Great company, good food and wine – what else can I ask? 😉
On Easter Sunday I also had a great time – a lovely lunch-which-was-then-extended-to-dinner with my Portuguese friends living here in Canterbury, with a gap in between to get to the pub to watch the Boat Race on telly with the guys from the club (Oxford won quite cleanly – quite a change from last year, rowing-wise, and I also enjoyed being in the pub with a pint in hand watching the whole race, instead of freezing to death on the banks of the Thames! :P).
A great time, indeed – I now fully recharged my “batteries” for some weeks’ worth of hard work!
I am really out of shape! Just finished a run which was not even 11k and my calves are killing me! 😛
Well, now with longer days and (hopefully) warmer weather I’ll try to improve things! 🙂
Yes, the WordPress dashboard does not lie, this is my 100th post here! 🙂
I started this blog in August last year after returning home from a 6-month period abroad in Canterbury (I still managed to have a short holiday in the last week there with my brother, and we had great fun roaming around Kent and also exploring London for a couple of days!).
It accompanied me throughout the final stages of my MSc thesis, its viva and future prospects which ultimately brought me to Canterbury again. And, so far I’ve been using it to rant about the weather and make a more-or-less boring account of what I have been up to around here. Even looking at my November posts I feel that I already had a slight evolution, as I’m gradually progressing from a “fresh-from-university” MSc student into a more responsible and independent researcher and even teacher. It is quite amazing how so much can change in such a short span of time!
OK, here’s to another 100 posts! (hopefully not as long as the ones I’ve been outputting lately!)
Aha, I knew Thursday was going to be a busy day even before it started…
To start, nothing better than cycling down to Lidl at 8 AM to do some shopping. And before you start, let me tell you that there is a perfectly good reason for me to have done so! 🙂 Mondays and Thursdays are the days when Lidl refreshes those “one-off” promotions, and this week they had loads of bicycle accessories. You’re starting to get the picture? And even though I don’t think they would have everything sold out by the end of the day, I really had to go in the morning before work as I had plenty of stuff to do in the evening.
(and good thing that I decided so, as apparently Canterbury was completely overwhelmed during the day to the enthronement of the new Archbishop – lots of guests, including VIPs such as the PM and Prince Charles, apparently…)
I had gone to Lidl with my mind set on a new light kit, as my “old” (3 months-old) front light is behaving erratically, switching between modes as I’m cycling along – still works well as a torch, though! I also wanted a little £4.99 accessory kit which came with a nice little pouch (good for those long bicycle rides, in case something comes loose or I have a flat and I’m too far away from home to consider walking back! 😛 ) and a comfortable saddle – I had said before I wasn’t liking the factory-fitted saddle which came with my Raleigh…
Well, I got that and still more! 😛 I found a triple pannier bag set just sitting there all by itself, apparently it was the only one left and thus was slightly reduced in price (£14.99). As my bags were already a bit shabby (probably due to the fact that I repeatedly overload them with groceries every time I go shopping!) I decided to stretch the budget a bit and bought it as well. Boy oh boy, isn’t that thing great! All the other stuff I got is really nice and all, but the bag set is absolutely great, a very good buy indeed (review to follow!).
OK, and I now realise I have written 4 paragraphs on what I did for half an hour on a Thursday morning. No wonder I hate writing 250-word abstracts for conference submissions! 🙂
Moving on… cycled back home (which was quite a journey in itself, since I had to hold the extra bags with one hand while keeping the other on the handlebar, and indicating/braking/changing gear became so much more interesting!), and from there to the lab.
And in the afternoon I had the club’s Ergathon. As I am a bit out of shape (this nasty winter hasn’t helped, and I’m only training on weekends due to transport issues!) I decided to take it easy and did only 5k at a relatively leisure pace (after all, I am a leisure rower! 😀 ). Still, it was just what I needed to warm myself up, as the sun remained stubbornly behind the clouds and a bitterly cold wind was blowing (the fact that the University campus is on the top of a hill also doesn’t help!).
After stepping out of the erg I returned to the lab, only for leaving almost immediately afterwards – cycled furiously home (can you do that on a commuter bike like mine? Apparently you can, especially when going downhill!) , got home, showered and dressed a bit less shabbily (after all, I’m not going dining out every day!), and I was out of the door again in 20 minutes, climbing up the hill towards the campus all over again, as the shuttle bus that links the two campuses leaves from the bus stop in front of Darwin College.
We took the shuttle amid lots of cheerful talk. Even though I skype to my family quite frequently, it feels really good to be able to speak Portuguese with real people on the street, if even for one night.
One hour later, there we were in Medway, and our “host” André guided us to the Portuguese restaurant/café. I had brought some cash on me, since I thought the café would be something very local and, in a way, a bit shabby (perhaps I was thinking of the typical village café you find in the Portuguese countryside!) and therefore had no electronic payment method.
Well, I was quite wrong – just off the High St, quite cheerfully decorated and all! Best of all (obviously) it had all the food I miss around here – francesinha, bitoque, salted codfish (bacalhau!!), roasted suckling pig (leitão no forno), the lot! And, to top it up, at that hour of the night (people here seem to think it is a good idea to dine at 18h..) all of the people in the restaurant were Portuguese, so for a while you could think you were back home, at least if you didn’t look outside the window! 🙂
Outside Café Jaer, a Portuguese restaurant/coffee shop in Gillingham high street (just a 40 minute drive from Canterbury!). Wonderful food and excellent company – what else can I ask? (I had to crank up the ISO setting on my camera to take proper evening shots – sorry about the noisiness!)Never thought I’d see one around these shores so soon… but apparently I was wrong. This thing was gigantic – normally I don’t struggle with a francesinha, but this time I found it a bit complicated to finish it (and I had done 5k on the erg just before dinner, I was really starving! 🙂 )And suddenly … I teleported myself back to Porto and I was just having an expresso with friends. As long as I didn’t look outside the window, it felt quite accurate!
Really fantastic – good food, great company, I can’t really ask for more. And the owner lured us back with the promise of leitão in a few weeks, along with more cod! (he only gets his shipments quite infrequently, as we are a bit away from the bigger markets. Still, it is way better than to go to London just for dining out!)
The shuttle service between the two campuses is an excellent idea, and to top it up it runs all the way until midnight, and it is FREE for all Kent students and staff! 😀 Sadly, it will only be running until the end of this term (April 5th). Oh well, anyway it is not too long for me to get my car…
As you can see from the length of this post (I really need to stop writing this much, I have the impression no-one actually reads this – I’m just scaring people away with the amount of text I put here! 😛 ), Thursday was quite a big day. But I like big days once in a while, otherwise I just get bored!… 🙂
Taking into consideration the fact that I’m being held prisoner in my own house due to the horrible weather outside (stupid wind will not die down for anything, and I was really fancying a run today!), I will then use this imposed spare time to do some postponed activities, such as properly updating this blog.
Apart from a few photos and rants about the famous English weather this blog hasn’t seen a “proper” update in more than one month, so let us remedy the situation, shall we? 🙂
The term is almost finished: in fact, I’ll have my last lab session next Monday! Then I’ll have another pile of reports to mark, but that’s about it — then I can devote my full attention to my research (and my PhD) until October! I’ve been having some crazy Mondays, they are very tiresome but also very rewarding, and I’m starting to realise the big “people skills” boost these sessions have been giving me! And I really enjoy guiding the students towards the understanding of a specific phenomena: the icing on top is when they finally understand it and I can leave their bench with the feeling of accomplished duty. 🙂 I don’t know how the world will turn and where I’ll be in 3 years’ time (that’s when I hope to get my PhD finished!…), but a career in academia, or, at least, with some teaching involved, yes, I think I’d like that. 😉
Well, enough of thinking about the far future, when there are so many things to consider at present… apart from the teaching, my research is progressing, and hopefully we will have publishable results soon (if I’m not mistaken, I think I wrote the exact same thing in another post not too long ago… but now I think we are definitely there, and then there’s the extra encouragement of another project to be carried out, hence the current one needs to be completed ASAP!…). So far I’ve been having fun imaging several samples (including my thumb, which might one day become one of the most imaged thumbs in the world!) whilst testing and improving the sensitivity of the two channels of my system. But I won’t bore you with details, let’s move on, shall we?
Here is an early image taken with my system. Yes, this is an optical fibre over a blob of blue-tac, although that’s not very evident…
OK, moving on: my lovely bike turned 300 miles on its odometer, at last! I think I’m doing a lower mileage versus time on this bike when comparing with my “old” Dunlop (well, it is only one year old now – but it is older than the Raleigh, isn’t it?). In truth, I already know most of the neighbouring region around Canterbury, so I feel no need to actually cycle to new places during the weekends (anyway, my weekends have also been quite filled with rowing practices, report marking, house chores, and shopping…). Apart from one weekend when I actually had to cycle to the boathouse (partially: I took the train to Minster and then cycled 4 miles to the boathouse!), the furthest this bike has gone was to Sturry (2 miles away from Canterbury), just after I got it (and that was last year!).
Hopefully when the days get warmer and nicer I might consider some longer trips. But it is also a bit dull to go all by myself, and unfortunately I still haven’t found people willing to go with me explore some new regions!… 🙁
There you,go, 300.3 miles on the clock! (the mileage on this one is building up at a considerably lower rate than with my older Dunlop, a combination of bad weather and a lot of weekends having to work and train…)
The bike itself, so far it hasn’t disappointed that much. Apart from some brake tuning I had to do (pretty easy, these are V-brakes!) to make it stop properly and an annoying tendency for the chain to jump out of the front dérailleur gearset when I ask for the highest gears (which already happened twice – I suspect it is just a case of tuning the tension of the cable, but it is so rare for me to use the highest gears that I couldn’t be bothered doing that…), it hasn’t let me down, and if there is no wind slowing me down it can go quite fast as well. And I was a bit worried about its skinny tyres when the first snow came – bah! She handled the snow quite remarkably, I have been cycling to the lab every day, under rain or snow, no issues whatsoever!… 🙂
And Lidl will have a nice promotion on bike accessories this week, so I suspect I’m going to break the bank a bit and get some new stuff for the bike – the front light I bought for it is not working very well anymore, and I could use a more comfortable saddle (after all, this is a touring bike, not a racing one, so one should be *comfortable* while riding it!).
£15 in Lidl, quite a good deal! Will post a detailed review soon…
Speaking of Lidl, I’ve been there last week getting my groceries (lately I’ve been ditching Sainsbury’s for Lidl!… 🙂 ) and out of an impulse I got myself a pedometer/wristwatch/heart rate monitor gizmo. A detailed review will follow, but so far I’m pretty pleased with it, even though I still need to calibrate the pedometer function properly…
And yesterday the club kit I had ordered a few weeks ago finally arrived! After more than 3 years rowing, I finally got myself my very first onesie (that’s what they call them around here, in Portuguese we use the French term maillot). You’ll eventually see me in it soon, as there will be a series of events involving rowing (both in water and out of it) in the near future :). As I refuse to take a photo of myself wearing it just for the sake of having an image here, you’ll have to trust me on this one, it looks really great! (and I love the burgundy… would that have something to do with the fact that I drive a burgundy car? :))
OK, I think that’s more than enough (confession: I’ve started writing it yesterday, Mar 16th, but only finished the following day, so it is quite a sizeable endeavour!) for a single post, and if you managed to get to this point without falling asleep or closing the browser window I have to congratulate you! 🙂 Soon I’ll be posting a detailed review of the pedometer and some other tidbits (let’s see if I can start updating this more frequently, as that will reduce the amount of text in each individual post!…).
I was just checking car insurance quotes and I was amazed to find that, for the very same car (a cheap, smallish Fiat which sits in a very low insurance group), if I declare its value to be less than £500 the premium will actually rise!
And quite significantly, too – if I declare its value to be around the £700 mark they’ll quote me a premium of £480 (fully comprehensive), but if I lower that figure the premium will rise at least £300!
Seriously, why? I mean, if I wreck the car and they have to pay me back its declared value, they’d have to pay me less… makes no sense!
… today I woke up at 10:30 and spent the rest of the day with a massive headache. It happens every the time I oversleep! :/
(but yeah, after waking up yesterday at 6 AM for my morning practice, followed by a birthday party in the evening, I really needed the rest, even though it shouldn’t have been this much! 😛 )
