And the answer is...

Grace was right: Orakei Korako, a thermal area between Rotorua and Taupo. Here are two more pictures.




And a couple of pictures of pretty foliage, in some cases steaming gently:

Mystery photos

Can anyone guess what sort of a place we visited today?

Poor alien(ated) Geekman

"Men might be from Mars and women from Venus, but most of the time I feel like I'm from Alpha Centauri."

Learning new words

So far this trip to New Zealand has greatly improved my vocabulary.

From time spent with my 11-year-old half sister and 14 year-old half brother, I have learned that "random" is now an exclamation akin to "awesome" or "cool".

E.g. "Hey, watch this card trick."
[Demonstrate card trick.]
Sister, impressed: "Random!"

From time spent with various other family members, I have learned that "sweet as" has moved on from an exclamation to a bona fide adjective that can come before the noun.

Formerly: "How was the BBQ?"
"Sweet as."

Now: "That was a sweet as BBQ, eh bro?"

From the NZ news, I have learned that the verb "to monster" has now crossed the Tasman. I have come across it in Australia (and been baffled - "Paedophile monsters small boy"), but heard it for the first time here a couple of days ago: "The car was monstered off the road by a logging truck, and rolled down the bank."

From the "I can't believe they just asked that" files

When I told my parents-in-law about the lecturing job I have lined up for this semester, I got the following responses:

"Do you have to prepare your own lectures?"

"Do they pay you?"

Poor little Geekboy

Obviously academic insecurity starts early, as evidenced by this conversation with my 14-year-old brother.

"Do you have exams this year in school?"

"Yeah, and I'm doing year 12 English, Geography and Maths, so they'll probably be hard. Especially Maths, because I suck at Maths."

"You suck at Maths? I don't think so, or they wouldn't be letting you do it a year ahead."

"But I nearly didn't get into the top stream."

(And the sadder thing: his sister, overhearing, added, "But only because your revision notes got ruined when they flushed your schoolbag down the toilet the week before the entrance exam.")

Summer at the beach

Some things about New Zealand don't seem to have changed much since I was a kid.

A little boy of six or seven broke his wrist down at the wharf today. He was there by himself. His mum was out somewhere; there was no one at home (which was a 20 minute walk away anyhow). No one out of the twenty of so kids or three adults there had a phone, and the adults didn't have cars. One of the adults took him back to her place, since it was only a ten minute walk away. No one seemed bothered by the fact that this little boy was going off with a total stranger. Everyone seemed to have no doubt at all that everything would turn out all right, and I guess it probably will.

I wonder if the hospital will call child protective services when they find that the kid was swimming in the sea alone, at home alone, and doesn't know how to contact his parents? Or maybe that's still so common around here that no one will be at all surprised.

This is what an electrician's house looks like

And yes, that is a plug socket in the ceiling.


There are also windows that can't be shut, ever, because powercords go through them and are attached directly to the outside wires.

Sad, but probably true

Overheard in the fruit and vege market, a mother unloading berries, mangoes, and asparagus at the checkout, talking to her 8-year-old daughter.

Mother: "These are healthy and yummy."

Daughter: "Yay! Blueberries! Why can't we have yummy healthy food all the time?"

Mother: "Because it's too expensive. Once a week is okay, but normally you can have either healthy or yummy."

How to be European, in one easy lesson

When we were packing for our recent move, I came across this sticker that Jana sent us a few years ago. In case you need the background, signs like this are fairly common in Europe, but totally weird out Australians (and NZers) and she thought we could do with introducing a little cultural uncertainty into our bathroom. For guests, you understand.


What struck me, looking at this sticker again, was the different translations. The German tells you what is not allowed: "Please do not stand while peeing." The English is a polite request to sit down, without any mention of bodily functions. And the pragmatic French translates as, "He who sits down does not pee on his feet."

It's beginning to feel a lot like graduation

I heard unofficially that two of my three examiners' reports are in. And with two recommended passes, and a late third report, the university policy is to go ahead and award the degree.

One of the two reports was apparently "glowing" (this from my supervisor: students don't get to view the report in full), requires no revisions, and recommended my thesis for a prize for outstanding dissertations. Briefly my usual insecurities stepped in and made me wonder who it was so that I could mentally down-grade their professional judgement, but then the new me—Dr StyleyGeek, I presume—gave those insecurities a good telling off. The other report was also good, and requires only a few minor revisions (my supervisor says it's mostly typos).

The next step is that my supervisor gives me excerpts from the report that requires revisions, I make the revisions, get the library copies of the dissertation bound and handed in, and then I can graduate!

Woo hoo!

You know something ironic?

The company that owes me that money, and has done the disappearing act? I've just been googling them, and along with their many other tentacles of business dealings, they also claim to specialise in debt collection.

Gah!

You may remember how a certain company owes me $500 for work I did on their non-existent magazine.

I have their emails offering me the job, their emails requesting certain articles to be written, and my emails responding to these. I also have my invoices and copies of the letters/emails I sent them, requesting payment.

I recently sent them a "if you don't pay me within the month, I will be taking you to the Small Claims Court" letter (which, as far as I understand it, is a requirement before you do take them to the Small Claims Court).

This is that letter, boomeranged nicely back into my letterbox today.


So what do I do next? I doubt I can take them to even the small claims court without a valid address, phone number or email contact (emails are bouncing; their phone is cut off; they've taken their website down). Also, I'm supposed to notify them and give them a warning before I do so (does trying to contact them count?) It's not worth talking to a lawyer, since I expect their fees would soon be more than the $500 I am trying to recover.

Do I just let it go?

And what if the sun went nova? What THEN?

When I write computer programs, Geekman always disapproves of my code.

"You have to think about contingencies," he tells me. "Using that sort of simple container for faculty member information might be fine for now, but it will have serious problems if your department suddenly employs an extra 200 people. And as for your alphabetising function: what if they add extra letters to the alphabet?"

I tell him I'm willing to take BOTH those risks. Because I'm a daredevil like that.

It is still January, right?

Our local shop has put up their Easter egg display already.

Is this a gender difference, or is one of us just strange?

"I'm just going to put some of that stuff on your bedside table away, in case people come in here during the party."

"Why? We're married. People know we have sex."

"Yeah, but there's a difference between abstractly knowing we have sex (at unspecified times, in unspecified ways), and seeing the evidence."

"Why?"

"For me, at least, it's like the difference between people knowing I wear a skimpy nightdress, and me answering the door wearing it."

"Why would that be a problem?"

"Well, I guess I figure that if people see that I've just had sex, or that I'm wearing skimpy nightwear, it might trigger them to imagine what I'm like in bed or something, and talking to someone when you think that they might be thinking about having sex with you is just embarrassing."

"Girls are weird."

I love this time of year

(Yes, we are having a party tonight. Come on over!)

Jelly shots, because I never did do them when I was 18

Hooray for exploitation!

I was asked today to step in and teach the big intro course in our department this coming semester. Unfortunately, the circumstances surrounding the inability of the usual person to teach it mean that this person has also not put together a syllabus, ordered the textbooks, reserved the library loans, or, well, anything. And the course starts in four weeks. Three of which I will be in New Zealand for.

Stupidly, I'm really excited about this job, even though intellectually I know I should be raising one ironic eyebrow and drawling, "Hooray for last minute sub-minimum-wage academic exploitation". Screw it. I'm going to be excited anyway, on the other half of my brain.

There's a carnival.

Go read it, because it's cool.

An anthropological puzzle

Our (now ex)-HOD (who still needs a better pseudonym), asked me yesterday about an observation he had made when last in New Zealand, and which, although I was able to confirm, I was at a total loss to explain. Perhaps someone knows? Badaunt? Other random NZ readers?

"When you are driving through the countryside in New Zealand," he said, "and you pass a farm, next to the letterbox there is often a little corrugated iron hut and chained to it—"

"—a goat," I finished for him (because I'm impolite like that).

"Yes," he said. "A goat. Why?"

"Well, that's where you keep your goat," I replied, rolling my eyes, because of course that's where you keep your goat.

"But why?"

"Why what?"

"Why by the letter box? Why the little hut?"

"The hut, well... it's the goat hut," I explained. "For the goat."

He gave me a Look.

"Maybe to keep the rain off?" I hazarded.

"But why the letterbox? Is it so that the goat can defend you against the postman? Or eat the junk mail?"

"Where would you keep your goat?" I asked, with the smug sense of whipping out the conversational mat from under his feet.

"I wouldn't have a goat."

"Well, if you did. You'd surely keep it by the letterbox too, wouldn't you? In its hut."

"I don't think I would. I don't think I'd feel any social pressure to keep it in any particular place," he explained. And then added the real stumper. "Why do New Zealanders keep a goat anyway?"

So, my plea to any rural New Zealanders reading this blog: do you have answers to any of the following burning questions?

1. Why do rural NZers keep goats and Australians not?
2. Do we really tend to keep them chained to little iron huts by the letterbox, or are ex-HOD and I both suffering from a joint delusion?
3. Why the little hut?
4. Why the letterbox?

If no one can solve this puzzle soon, there will be nothing that can stop ex-HOD(wnabp) from suggesting it to the anthropology department as an honours student project topic.

Maybe I'll stick with the academic jobs for now

"How much do you think hitmen charge?"

"I think it depends on the context. If you are in a gang, you probably only get a couple of hundred dollars. If you are a professional hired to kill a politician, maybe a few hundred thousand. Why, are you thinking of hiring one?"

"No, I was wondering if I could be one."

"Well, how much would you charge?"

"If it were someone I actually liked or respected, no amount of money would get me to kill them. If it were someone I didn't feel strongly about either way, maybe I'd do it for a few million. For someone who I thought deserved to die, I might give a discount."

"You scare me."

"But if you're right, and people can hire a hitman for a few hundred dollars, I'd never be likely to get a hitman job at the prices I'd charge, so that's almost the same as having morals, right?"

"Uh, no."

Little gems heard in my department today

Our (now ex-)HOD, giving feedback on my grant proposal, "My only real criticism is that the project sounds like too much fun. The referees might think that it's a bit frivolous: like, 'Here's someone who likes screwing around on the internet. And they want us to give them money to keep screwing around on the internet.'"

Me, "Well, yeah."

***

Random faculty member, "It was so much better when I first started working here. There was no expectation to publish if you didn't feel like it. Tenure was automatic. Now they're always pressuring you to do so much work."

***

My supervisor, "Bloggers are... well, they aren't the most educated of people, are they? I mean, they tend to be lower socio-economic groups, dropouts... I'm not surprised they don't use standard English."

***

Ex-HOD, who really needs a better pseudonym, "The other potential weak point in your proposal is your track record, of course. You really need more publications in order to have a chance of getting a postdoc in this day and age."

Then five minutes later, when the conversation has moved onto gossiping about other students, "You know, [PhD student] applied for an extension recently. And the only reason she isn't finished on time is that she keeps spending time on publishing papers instead of writing her thesis. I'm really quite annoyed about this. The time to publish is after you have your PhD, not during it, at the school's expense."

***

My supervisor again, on a totally different subject, "So I sent off my book review to the journal, and I got an email back from the editor, saying they forgot they had asked me to review it, and have since signed up someone else to do it instead!"

Me, "That's awful! Surely they can't do that!"

My supervisor, "I know! I couldn't believe it! I mean, I know I took more than two years to get around to writing the review, but they didn't tell me they would give it to someone else..."

When our internet is back up, I'm so doing this

How to mess with neighbours who are poaching on your wireless.

Yes, I am five years old

I used the word ass in a grant proposal. Hee hee.

Life after the technological apocalypse

A typical evening in our house lately:

6 pm: Arrive home, collapse in front of the computer to catch up on blogs and news. Oh wait, that's right: we don't have internet at home right now.

6:30 pm: Time to cook dinner. Open cupboards, find bag of lentils, half a carrot, and a whole heap of tomatoes. Think to self, I bet there are some Indian dishes I could make with these ingredients; I'll just go check out some Indian sites on—oh wait. No internet.

7:25 pm: Debate with Geekman about the purpose of human nose hair. Neither of us can handle the open-endedness of a discussion that can't be resolved by Wikipedia.

7:30 pm: I wonder what's on TV? Go to look up TV times online. Oh wait...

8:30 pm: Decide to do some knitting. Except, I've just got to the tricky bit in my pattern... which is online.

8:35 pm: Try to use dishwasher for the first time in this new apartment. Totally baffled by the dials and rinse aid holder. If only I had a copy of the manual. I bet it's available online.

8:40 pm: Still wondering about nose hair.

8:45 pm: Decide to call a friend. Except that her phone number, like most other important numbers, is stored in my email.

9 pm: I would really really like to read blogs, play scrabble, read the news, or aimlessly surf the web right now. Since these aren't options, I reluctantly settle down to do some work.

9:01 pm: Realise I left some important files on my university computer. Not a problem—I can ftp them. Oh, wait.

9:15 pm: Filled with a burning desire to know how closely arachnids are related to crustaceans. Curse my lack of Wikipedia access.

9:30 pm: Geekman suggests baking some muffins. But no! Our favourite muffin recipe is on the internet, and we've never printed it out, because we'll always have the internet, surely.

10 pm: Give up and go to bed. Lie awake wondering about nose hair and arachnids.

Geekman the literalist

"The people who used these boxes before us were liars."

"Huh?"

"This one is labeled 'linen closet'. But there is no way a linen closet would fit in here."

Okay, maybe one more post

To give you an example of how arduous this whole moving thing is: we now have to spend the rest of the evening drinking, so as not to have to take bunches of half-empty liquor bottles with us tomorrow.

Pity us.

Boxes boxes everywhere

Moving house sucks. And that's pretty much the sum total of in-depth analysis I have on this situation.

I wrote a grant proposal, though. And got feedback in pretty much the shortest time period known to humankind. It was unhelpful feedback, but it didn't say my project was worthless, even though that's how I interpreted it for the first hour or two.

And now I'm moving. I doubt there'll be time to blog between now and Tuesday.

Happy weekend, people.

Writing my grant proposal

Section E3: Describe how the aims and concepts of this research are innovative and significant.

What I write:
This project is full of innovation and significance! Oh yes indeedy! You'll be amazed! My aims are to discover a theory of everything and rule the world. In an innovative fashion. And this is significant because everyone likes world domination.

What I would like to write:
They just are. Okay?


Section E5: Explain how your project has economic, environmental or social benefits for Australia, and how it contributes to our National Research Priorities of defending against terrorism and conserving water.

What I write:
Blah blah blah, bullshit bullshit bullshit. No really, I mean it. Bullshit bullshit bullshit. Linguistics relates to languages. And if everyone spoke lots of languages we'd all understand each other and there would be peace and love and happiness and unicorns would rule the earth and there'd be no more terrorism. Water for everyone!

What I'd like to write:
Actually, my project has no relationship to any of these priorities whatsoever, and do you really expect me to give a fuck about Australia's economic, environmental or social benefits? What do I look like, some kind of patriot?

Loose ends

So imagine we are sitting here, me and you. On the couch in the lounge, in a kind of sprawled out "I wish we'd stopped halfway through that chocolate fondue" position, but happy despite it all. We're a little bit sway-y, what with that bottle of cheap red wine and all, but the air is too hot and heavy to try and sleep. We're wearing hardly any clothes already, and don't know each other well enough to take off the rest of them, so we're just going to have to steam gently in the eucalyptus-scented heat and fend off heatstroke as best we can with ice cream. (Yes, I know, I lost you for a minute there while you did a double take at the thought of New Year's Eve in midsummer. Do try to be a little less Northern-Hemisphere-centric when you read this blog, okay?)

Anyway, we're here, hot and tired, but there's still half an hour to go before we can reasonably start to stroll towards the city centre to watch the midnight fireworks show. Geekman is in the other room, trying to invent a better lossless bitmap compression algorithm, because that's the sort of thing he does for fun, but we aren't like that, you and me, so we sit here and chat.

And you remind me that I've been a little bit thoughtless with the switch-and-bait blogging lately: setting up half a story and not following through. You give me a Look and I know it means you are half joking but also kind of pissy and it's only the wine and chocolate that's tipped the balance in my favour. So I give you permission to hit me with the questions and once you start, you're a regular little Energizer bunny.

"Whatever happened to...

... the scam you mentioned a couple of weeks back?"

Remember this magazine writing job I had for, like, five minutes (if it ever existed at all)? I had an interview, was offered the job, and asked to write six feature articles for the February issue. I did the work and emailed it to the guy in charge. The email promptly bounced. All emails to his address and all other addresses associated with the company have bounced ever since (15th December onwards). He doesn't answer his mobile phone: it just rings forever and doesn't even go to voicemail. The company's landline cuts in with an answer phone, and the messages I have left there go unanswered. I have not been paid. Since the deadline I was given was 16th December, and I was told the February issue needed to be finalised and sent to the printer by Christmas, I am pretty sure that something is wrong. I just have no idea what it is, why it happened, or what this guy stood to gain from scamming me, if that's what it was.

"... those American chocolate bars you promised to taste and report back on?"

Didn't happen yet. Hopefully it still will. Maybe I should make it my New Year's Resolution to eat more chocolate. That's one I could probably keep.

"... your plan to throw yourself at the mercy of the new superstar professor and beg for a post-doc position?"

I did it. He said he didn't have funding for a post doc himself, but was happy to support me in a grant application. We had a brief very strange meeting, where he arrived on bicycle wearing pink flip-flops, shorts, and a pink Hello Kitty backpack, and tried to persuade me to go and do fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. In the end, I decided that if I'm applying for my own funding, I'd rather do a project that really excites me, so I'm putting together a grant application for my blog-reading-as-research idea. I'm hoping Superstar Professor will still want to support me, as it's still tangentially linked to his own research, but I won't find out until I send him my draft later this week.

"... the pseudo-semi-pesco-vegetarianism?"

I'm not pressing the issue at other people's houses, so pretty much went back to being carnivorous over Christmas. Otherwise it's going well, and Geekman is even sometimes choosing to join me in a vegetarian meal even when he has other options.

"... your mother's cancer?"

She finished chemotherapy just before Christmas. They told her that with her type of cancer she had a 25% chance that it was still waiting in the wings somewhere and would reoccur. This can be lessened by radiation, so she is now on a waiting list for that. She was pretty pissed off about it all, since they have been telling her since mid December that she'll be called to start it "any day now", so she couldn't leave town over the holidays. Yet they still haven't called. She just wants to get it over with and get back to work.

"And did you really get Geekman's parents the cranberry jam they wanted for Christmas?"

No, we aren't quite that cheap. We got them cranberry jam, but also visited Ikea in Melbourne and bought them knäckebröd and hjortronvinegär and glögg and Swedish coffee and julmust as well.

"And how about 2008, anyway? Do you have a...

... job?"

Not really. I have three part time web design jobs for various university departments, and some tutoring lined up for the first semester. But I need something that pays the more serious bills. Preferably some academic work. Does anyone need a research assistant? I can telecommute!

"... place to live?"

Yes. We are moving on Saturday (argh).

"...plan?"

Let me see... Would you like some more coffee? Let me clear away those cups and plates.

"Have you even graduated yet?"

No. I'm still waiting for the examiners' reports on my thesis (these are the overseas anonymous referees that we have in lieu of a defense). Unofficial word is that one report is in and glowing. Two still to come. Hopefully they will come in in the next month or two, so that I can make any necessary revisions and graduate in the July ceremony.

"Isn't that a poisonous spider sitting on your next-door neighbour's door?"

Yes, but it's been there for more than a week now, and they don't seem bothered. Although, come to think of it, I haven't seem them around lately, and there is a funny smell from their apartment...

Anyway, now that we're all up to date, and you have asked all your awkward questions, I'll pour you the last glass of wine and we can toast the New Year in together.

Greetings from 2008, guys! Come on over! I got there before you, but I'll keep it warm until you get here.

Because it's been a while since I blogged about productivity tools

For the last few weeks I have been using a great online "to do" list application, Remember The Milk. The more I use it, the more I like it.

In my opinion, its best features are the following:

It talks to Google products. You can integrate it with Google Calendar, or (my personal favourite), with Gmail. In Gmail your to-do list then becomes a right-hand column, so that someone like me who checks their email obsessively has no excuse for forgetting the tasks for the day.

It is super easy to add tasks. You can do it from within your Gmail account, from within Google Calendar, by sending the program an email, or on the Remember The Milk site. Minimally, it involves one click and typing in the name of the task. (You can add much more info about the task if you wish, though, including priority, due date, location, etc.)

The application is smart. For due date, for example, you can type "today", "tomorrow", "Wednesday", "1 Jan", "Jan first", etc, and it recognises all of these and converts them to its standard formats. If you are adding a task from within your email account, and include the name of one of your contacts (e.g. "call Richard"), it uses your email address book to auto-complete.

It probably has many more features I haven't explored yet, but one of the things I like about it is that you can get started straight away using a very minimal subset of what it can do, all of which is totally intuitive, and only begin using the more advanced settings and features if and when you find them helpful.

The New Year's Meme

I've deleted the questions that bore or baffle me.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?


• Handed in a dissertation!
• Convened an entire course all by myself.
• Went to Adelaide.
• Tried being kinda sorta pseudo-fake-vegetarian.
• Developed a Scrabulous addiction.
• Went cross-country skiing and snow camping.
• Went without sugar for a couple of months.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
 No, and yes, because clearly I like to delude myself.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
 A couple of friends did, but since I only see them once every couple of years now, I don't know if that counts as close.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
 My grandmother.

5. What countries did you visit?
 New Zealand.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
 A well-paid job.

7. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
 The thesis.

8. What was your biggest failure?
 Not getting a single publication out.

9. Did you suffer illness or injury?
 Nope. At least nothing major enough that I remember it.

10. What was the best thing you bought?
 I didn't really buy stuff. Gifts, I guess. The juicer I bought Geekman for his birthday is awesome.

11. Where did most of your money go?
 Rent. Savings.

12. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
 Teaching. It was exciting (and nerve-wracking) to have my own course with my own 80-odd students all to myself to do with as I pleased.

13. Compared to this time last year, are you:
 a) happier or sadder? 
b) thinner or fatter? 
c) richer or poorer?
 The same, the same, and richer (see number 11).

14. What do you wish you’d done more of?
 Writing. (I know, I wrote a dissertation and all, but most of what I did on that this year was editing. I wish I'd written more new stuff, both academic and for fun.) Going to the gym. Improving my foreign languages.

15. What do you wish you’d done less of?
 Aimless web surfing. Procrastination in general.

16. What was the best book you read?
 Wally Lamb's She's come undone. More about that when I finally get around to doing the book meme I was tagged for.

17. What did you want and get?
 Finished with the dissertation. Parrots tame enough to sit on my hand. An apartment that doesn't leak (as far as we know).

18. What did you want and not get?
 An apartment with rent that doesn't make me shudder. A publication or two.

19. What kept you sane?
 The internet. Hooray for online friends!

20. Who did you miss?
 Weekend Viking and Stellar Muddle, who moved back to NZ this time last year. Geekman, temporarily, while I was trapped in NZ looking after my mother back in June. And the same old friends I always miss: all the Christchurch crowd.

People do things differently. And it always shocks me.

Case in point #1: That hard rectangular package is not a book.

The people we spent Christmas with this year (distant relatives, most of whom we had not met before) all gave each other DVDs as gifts. Not a single book to be seen. Has the DVD become the new default present? Even we were given DVDs, which is weird since there is no way they could guess at what we would like, nor even know if we had a DVD player. I don't have anything against DVDs, but they would never even have crossed my mind as a Christmas gift option.

Case in point #2: Yes, we like our stone-age very much

A line from a Christmas letter from a family friend whose daughter (my age) has recently (finally!) moved out of home:

"M- has only had time off work since Friday, and since she is now the only woman in the household, it has been a little hectic for her with all the preparation for Christmas and baking and so on." (Note that her husband, the writer of the Christmas letter, is unemployed with plenty of time on his hands.)

On the second day of Christmas...

... can you guess where we went?




And it's even all free range and nice to the environment and shit. Which is probably why we didn't get to see half of the animals (bloody bandicoots, hiding in the vastness). With a fake savanna the size of 550 football fields to roam in, why would you hang out near the bits the tourists are able to get to?

At least the cheetah was willing (or hungry).

I'm back, and unpixelated

Because really, why bother?

I had an, um, interesting Christmas. It had its moments. Presents were on the weird side, although the two I got from Geekman (lava lamp and laptop bag) were awesome. My mother and father did not win any points. The former gave me a book on how to pray properly, and gave Geekman one sock. (She hasn't finished knitting the other one yet.) My father gave me some hand lotion. Both forgot(?) to give my brother anything. To his credit, he didn't seem bothered. Maybe he would rather not have one sock or a book on prayer.

In more exciting news, I got to catch up with a friend's housemate. Meet Keiko, who seemed convinced my hair needed a little work...


...and then demanded a bite of my sandwich as a reward.

An excellent Friday night

I'm playing the most incredible Scrabulous game right now. My opponent began with a bingo, I countered with another bingo, and got another one two turns later. We are now five turns (each) into the game, and the score is 245 to 173. Only one of my turns has scored under 30 so far.

Also: homemade noodles for dinner.

You should be glad I tell my stories to him and not to you

"Geekman, today there was a spider!"

One raised eyebrow.

"In my office! And not just any spider. This one was an icky spider. It was extra spidery."

The other eyebrow lifts.

"No, really. It was like a spider that had read about how to be a spider and taken notes and practised hard, and started competing in the spider spideriness Olympics. It was an archetypal spider."

"The platonic spider?"

"Exactly!"

"So what did you do with your platonic spider?"

"I hit it with Pidgins and Creoles, A Reference Survey."

Cuteness

Well, I guess it's been too long for this to be the result of this peckfest, but we do indeed have a new young rosellalet. (S)he is rather cute, all small and green, and constantly makes weird noises that I can only interpret as, "Watch me! watch me!" directed at his/her parents. Unfortunately (s)he is also extra nervous and every time I even move towards the balcony, let alone pull out my camera, baby's parents banish him/her to a distant tree.

I'll try to get a picture if they come back tomorrow or Saturday, but after that we will be away for Christmas, and we have decided not to feed the parrots any more on our return, in the hope that they might un-tame themselves before we are replaced with more dangerous bipeds (i.e. the teenage boys who are moving in here after us).

Local council turns hippy

This is the coolest initiative EVER.

All our local buses are now free if you are traveling with a bicycle! That means you can hook your bike on the front rack, jump in the bus, and not pay for a ticket.

If only I had known about this when we were house-hunting, it would have made the radius within which we could consider moving much, much larger.

I think maybe I got scammed

If so, I maybe lost around $500. I'm still hopeful I should be able to recover it, even if it turns out it was a scam. What bothers me more is that I don't understand the scam. Not the how, nor the why.

More details later, once I'm sure I'm not mistakenly maligning innocent people.

Um, *gulp*

Or maybe I'll go do fieldwork in Papua New Guinea instead.

Gah!

Dear Faculty Business Office,

I am urgently trying to find out when the local deadline is for [Grant Fellowship Application]. I tried to check your website, but could not access it. Could you please let me know when this deadline is?

Thanks,
Styleygeek

Dear Styleygeek,

The information you require is on our website. It is down at present for maintenance. We will notify you when the site is back up.

Regards,
Faculty Business Office.

I guess "urgently" means something different to them from what it means to me. Also, how hard would it be to just give me a date? I find it difficult to believe that no one knows this information without checking their own website.

The carnival of GRADual progress is up!

Go take a look. I'll still be here when you get back.

This should get me some interesting hits on Google

I was checking my spam folder today to see whether some real mail had been mixed in with it by mistake, and couldn't help but marvel at the creativity of some of the subject lines. For your ease of reading, and because I really can't help myself (categorization is what typologists do), I have sorted them into types. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

The scary:

Enormous monster phallus is every woman's dream. (I think this one could really ought to provide references. Freud would do, at a pinch.)

The up-to-date:

Get your wife better stimulation in year 2008
Don't let them laugh at your willy in 2008

The simple yet surreal:

Soonness

The WTF category:

Biggish Penis Anderson (the body text of this one is "Phallus Sizable Ryan")

The "this person needs a better outlet for their creativity" category:

Be a big success in the pants when you enlarge your dick.
Get the flag pole that counts!
Your sexual life will sparkle with brighter colors.
Grow an anaconda out of your trouser snake!

And this one, which I am repeating in full, because it has some sort of serene poetic quality that I can't ignore (yes, each sentence was on a different line. That kind of helped, I guess, since it made it look a little like haiku spam):

Do not be loser, change your aggregate size.
Your girl does not admire to do it with you for reason of your device size.
This is your possibility to solve the trouble.
All you have to do is just put to use our male machine enlargement.
You will forget about trouble and your chick will be glad.

To add to the list of things I have found in my bed

• A caterpillar
• Onion skin

I have no idea either.

I don't suppose anyone knows...

...why 10 or so otherwise quite normal-looking academics were processing across campus this afternoon playing the Branle des chevaux (on trombones, drums and tambourines), led by a student holding aloft a stack of newly printed dissertations?

No, me neither.

Lessons learned

1. Cycling very fast in the dark when you have no night vision is a bad idea.
2. Doing so while drunk is worse.
3. Cycling on the footpath is a good idea until it turns out someone has left a tree branch lying across it.
4. Flying over your handlebars is kind of fun.
5. Until you hit the ground.
6. And you should let go.
7. Of the handlebars.
8. Otherwise your bicycle cartwheels through the air as well and lands on top of you.
9. You don't injure very seriously when preserved in alcohol.
10. But things in the bag on your back do.

I can't get over how cool this is

This rosella has suddenly become totally fearless (or maybe his addiction has conquered all fear). He even climbed up my sleeve to my shoulder yesterday, just to explore.

Not homeless

We found an apartment. It's about $30 a week more than we were hoping to pay, but on the upside, it appears to be waterproof. Also quiet, and sunny, and a five minute walk from Borders, which are all the important things.

Given that all the other places at this end of the price-and-niceness scale rejected us, we suspect our application for this one was aided by the fact that the real estate company's fax number was wrong on their website, which may have delayed or doomed anyone not willing to wait around for half an hour to see if their fax really did go through.

I have to say, though, I'm not looking forward to dealing with a real estate company with this level of competence:

"Hi, I'm calling because I'm trying to fax you an application, and it isn't going through."
"Yes, our fax number on those forms is wrong."
"But we checked on your website, and the same number is there too."
"Yes, that's also wrong."
"???"
"We are planning to get someone in to update it at some point. But for now, let me give you the correct number."

Best idea EVER

I have come up with a grant proposal idea that, if successful, will let me indulge in blog reading in the name of research.

Woot!

Addiction is a bad thing

Wild thing, you make my heart sing

Groovy.

Background on the first bit of the last post

Questions United have asked me when I am booking trips:

"Which state is Australia in?"

"Do you mean Tonga, Australia?"

"Oh, you mean Tonga, in Vanuatu?"

More Geekman honesty

(Related entry here.)

After a difficult phone call

"United Airlines really need to change their slogan. If I were them, I'd go with, 'Customer service: it's optional.'"

********

At the bicycle shop

Geekman: "I think I need a new inner tube."
Salesman, looking doubtfully at the bicycle: "I think you need a new tyre."
Geekman: "You need to understand: I'm really cheap. How much do I need a new tyre?"
Salesman: "Well, it's the reason why your inner tube burst."
Geekman: "Okay, then."
Salesman: "Our absolute cheapest cheapskate tyres are $24."
Geekman beams: "I'll take one!"

More freaking houses

Places we have viewed since then.*

1. Extremely elegant building that simultaneously managed to be right in the centre of the city, and surrounded by a leafy heaven that dripped serenity. Wrought iron and stained glass everything. Extensive gardens with peaceful places to sit. Apartment on the top floor with a beautiful view, peeling paintwork, sagging, mouldy ceiling, and cat-pee flavoured carpets. $370 per week. Approximately 10 people at the showing.

2. Brand new apartment building a block and a half north of our current location. Two bedrooms, middle floor (so neither security problems nor leaking are likely), slightly larger than our current place, lovely balcony, brand new appliances, central heating and air conditioning. Swimming pool and underground parking. Nothing to dislike. Two apartments available: $360 and $380 a week respectively. 15-20 people at the showing.

3. Older apartment in a large complex, a bit further north, but still within cycling distance to university. A little smaller than our current place, but acceptable. No air conditioning and some windows face the busiest street in the city. This could make sleeping difficult in summer. $320 a week. 12 or so people at the showing, but most of them seemed to belong to the one family. Not sure what was up with that.

4. Gorgeous, extremely modern, brand new building just around the corner from us. Very large two-bedroom with all the pros of #2, except that it was on the ground floor, and had evidence of water damage. (Already! The builders haven't even quite finished yet and the freaking place is leaking!) The rent was listed as "negotiable", which is apparently illegal in this state. People at the showing: 3, presumably because they were confused by lack of rent prices. Other places in the same building are all over $420 a week, though.

5. Tiny ground floor two bedroom in a large complex opposite the shops two suburbs north of here. Security bars on windows and doors. Reasonable condition. Kitchen and bathroom are nice. Lots of storage space. No heating or air conditioning. $315 a week. Only one other couple at the showing.

We've applied for 1, 2a and b, and 3. We really want 2a, so we aren't quite sure what we'll do if the agent for 3 calls us before we've heard about 2. Or if we get offered 2b but not a. We would almost certainly turn down 1, but when we put in the application for that one we hadn't seen anything else yet that was even vaguely suitable and were getting nervous. If we don't hear from any of them by Tuesday, we'll put in an application for 5 as well.

We are a little bit frightened by the fact that a guy we spoke to at the showing for #3 said he and his partner had been looking for more than three months. But we suspect there may be discrimination at play there, since they were a gay couple and clearly not Australian in origin (maybe Indian?). It would suck to know that you might be rejected on either count.

Our applications for #1 and #2 look good on paper, although I couldn't provide proof of income. The application for #3 is a bit dodgier, since they required phone numbers for all our landlords going back ten years, and we couldn't remember most of them. (Plus half of them are overseas.) The form said forebodingly: "If full details are not given in this section, including phone numbers for EVERY landlord, we will not process this form."

_________

*I realise this may not be the most scintillating of blog posts, but as much as anything, it is for my own benefit so that I have a record of the places we've been looking at.

Irritating email exchange of the week

Between me and a committee that will remain nameless:

Dear all,

At our last meeting, we decided that we would pay me for my website work in advance to use up the funds in account X that are due to vanish at the end of December if unused. See attached minutes. [Guy in charge of account] informs me this would need to be processed immediately in order to take place in time. Just checking this is still okay.

Styleygeek.

Dear Styleygeek,

Go ahead and send in an invoice. The amount in the account is $1116.80. Please invoice for the whole sum. We'll sort out your hours later.

Chair of Committee.

Dear all,

Chair says to go ahead, so I've sent in my invoice for $1116.80 to admin (copy attached). Please let me know if the information on the invoice is sufficient.

Styleygeek.

Two days later, the chair sends the following email to my advisor (not even cc-ing me: I only heard about it later).

Dear Styleygeek's advisor,

Styleygeek appears to have sent us some sort of invoice for her website work. You need to talk to her about this. For one thing, I'm not sure she should be invoicing as a contractor, but rather needs to fill out a timesheet with the work as she does it. For another, she has invoiced for the entire amount of money in the account, and this doesn't leave us enough to also cover tax and benefits. [Note: hence my invoice as a contractor, since then it is MY responsibility to pay tax out of the total sum received, and they don't have to cover benefits. I thought their first mail made it clear that this is what they wanted, since they asked for an invoice, not a timesheet, and told me to charge them the whole remaining sum.]

I wonder if she realises that she would need an ABN in order for us to process such an invoice [uh, yes. That's why I put my ABN on the invoice I sent in] and that she would also have to pay taxes [duh]. Maybe we should talk about this at our next committee meeting [in July].

Chair.

According to the evaluations...

... my students want:

• full typed up notes distributed at every lecture
• a whole class devoted to revision before each quiz, assignment and exam
• not to have to read or hear about any information that won't be on the exam
• not to have to come to class if they don't feel like it, and not to have to expend any effort to catch up when they skip.

Silly me, I thought that university was about learning to make your own notes, to do your own revision, and about learning the occasional interesting thing for its own sake, rather than just for credit. Oops. My mistake.

If I didn't know that it was only a tiny minority of students making these comments, and if the overall evaluation statistics were not excellent, I would be seriously depressed.

Places we have looked at, or, I wonder what being homeless feels like?

1. A lovely two-bedroom central city apartment. Sunny, perfect condition, a little bigger than we have here. Rent = $370 a week (for comparison's sake, we are currently paying $320). Number of people at the showing: 20+. Many of them filled out applications on the spot.

2. A two-bedroom apartment three blocks north of our current place. Horrible horrible horrible. Big mould stains on the ceiling. Tiny and ugly and sunless. No bicycle rack or space. Swarming with cats (actually, I think this was a redeeming feature). Rent = $380 a week. Number of people at the showing: four.

3. A two-bedroom apartment in our current building. Slightly bigger than our current one. Windows in both bedrooms (we only have a skylight in one). Signs of water damage. Rent = $395 a week. Private showing.

4. A two-bedroom house about 20 minutes drive from university. Beautiful, sunny rooms. Lovely garden. Huge French doors in every room. Good condition apart from some roof tiles needing replacing, termite shields needing installation (WTF are termite shields?) and some garden work. Sale price = $330,000+. Offer would have needed to be made immediately. If it wasn't for the location (we'd need a new car) and for the fact it was the first place for sale we've viewed, I'd have made an offer.

5. A three-bedroom house around 20 minutes cycle ride (uphill) from university. Big garden with fruit trees. House in average condition, nice enough. Looks like it would be cold in winter, though (windows don't seal properly, minimal heating). Rent = $360 a week. Number of people at the showing: 30-ish? (And that was 10 minutes before the showing officially began: we were out of there by the time it really started).

What we are looking for:

(a) Two-bedrooms, easy cycling distance to university, no obvious water damage, rent preferably under $350 (although we are starting to realise that might be unrealistic). Long lease.

Alternatively:

(b) Two bedroom separate title house or townhouse, within a radius that means we could cycle to university if we absolutely had to (i.e. within 45 minutes or so), good condition, $350,000 or under. Quick sale.

Why is this so impossible? We currently live in an example of (a), and I've seen plenty of (b) on the market in the past.

Gah!

Wow! Look at my funky comments options!

Thanks, Ianqui.

*poof!*

I briefly switched to Haloscan because of this and then I switched back again because of this.

And you missed all the excitement. Shame on you!

Oh, the humanities!

A printed notice on the Classics department fridge:

There will be a spring-cleaning on Monday. Anything ancient, stinky or otherwise suss will be discarded.

Next to this, a handwritten scribble:

Oh no! We'll lose half the department!

Parrot on a stick

Two Friday highlights

You know you've got your money's worth (of something), when a variety show act actually makes audience members faint. (It was this. Warning: graphic images. Don't click through if you are squeamish about body modification.)

Our apartment is leaking again. All I can say is SO LONG, SUCKERS. That's what you get for buying a place without an engineer's report.

Wow, I'm all about the Schadenfreude today, aren't I?

I got a job, but if I told you, I'd have to kill you

I got a part-time job writing for a local magazine. But since I stupidly used revised blog posts as writing samples, I have to assume they might be reading here. Also, they made me sign a confidentiality agreement.

So let us never speak of it again.

Crap.

I saw this coming, but I don't know if that helps much.

We have to be out by the 1st of February. Which means 19th January, since we'll be going overseas for three weeks then. Which means before Christmas, since at the beginning of the year the housing market is flooded with students arriving for the new academic year.

More Geekman wisdom

Geekman sits down at the computer and opens his browser. "Have you blogged today?"

"Yes, just now. Why? Do you want to read it and find out what I've been up to?"

"Exactly. What did you blog about?"

"You."

"Then I guess I'll read it and find out what I've been up to."

Yes, it's ALL ELECTION ALL THE TIME, here in the Geek household

Geekman has been coming up with political slogans he would use if he ran for parliament. I think he's aiming for the "at least he's honest" vote.

Vote Geekman: A little bit better than some other quite good candidates.

Vote Geekman: Not totally bent on world domination.

Vote Geekman: My opinion, it's a better one.

I became a vegetarian and celebrated with beef lasagne

I've been wanting to try going pesco-vegetarian for a long time now. Not because any of the environmental, ethical or health reasons are totally convincing to me, but basically just because I don't enjoy meat as much as I do non-meat dishes, so I don't see why I should continue to eat meat when it is also (a) more expensive and (b) at least slightly controversial environmentally and ethically. (I don't feel the same way about seafood, so I'm not about to give that up any time soon.)

My main hurdle is that Geekman is the biggest carnivore of all carnivores. I honestly have no idea how other people manage in a relationship with one vego and one meat-lover. We hardly ever eat out, and cooking two separate meals each night is not feasible. But when we sat down and talked about it, we actually managed to come up with a plan that just might work. So we are going to try it for a month.

Lunches and breakfasts:
These are easy, since we eat separately already anyway. Lunch in particular is where I'll make an effort to incorporate the foods I should probably be eating if I'm going to avoid meat, but that Geekman doesn't like (tofu, whole grains, lentils).

Dinners:
A few times a week we'll cook something which we can add meat to his half of without any extra trouble, e.g. pasta or rice with sauce, stirfry with the meat cooked separately, salads, pizza etc. A couple of times we'll have something which has an easy vegetarian equivalent that can be cooked alongside the meat component: sausages for Geekman, vege sausages for me; hamburgers for Geekman; vegeburger for me. Once a week we'll have fish, which I'm happy to keep eating, providing we find out which fish species are not being overfished and only eat those. And once a week we'll still eat meat.

So that's how I ended up celebrating my conversion to (semi/pseudo-)vegetarianism with a beef lasagne. In case you were wondering.

In case you wonder why this election makes me so happy

"Mr Rudd said he would overturn a number of his predecessor's policies and sign the Kyoto Protocol and pull Australian troops out of Iraq."

(From BBC news).

Hooray!

You know what I'm talking about.

If I can't vote, I'm at least going to drone on and on about my political views. Also, free doughnuts.

In less than 24 hours, our own mini-George Bush will be OUT!

Of course, I said that last election too, and apparently the voting public didn't listen to me.

The trouble with getting a full picture is that I have never met a John Howard supporter in my life. After four years here, I feel totally safe assuming that anyone I meet feels the same way about Howard that I do, because it's worked for me so far. Which means, I guess, that there must be hordes of Howard supporters out in the wops (in as far as this city doesn't count as the wops), all mowing their sheep, or whatever rural people do, and talking about what a lovely boy Johnny is.

Let's hope not.

And as Geekman points out, given the number of people who are threatening to emigrate to New Zealand if Howard wins this one, there'd be no chance of ever changing the government in the future.

Anyway, free doughnuts.

I'm trying to be an academic, dammit!

I got offered a full-time IT job today. I nearly pointed out that being willing to employ me for an IT position is evidence that they have no idea what they are doing and therefore the last people I would want to work for.

Groucho Marx's principle might work for clubs, but refusing to work for any company that would have me as an employee is probably not a great career strategy.

So I politely explained that I'm not looking for full-time work right now. Why aren't people so forthcoming with job offers for areas I actually WOULD like to work in?

NZ has cool birds too

These videos of Woof Woof, the talking tui, are amazing. I especially like the first one.

All the tui we used to get in our garden in NZ were very aloof, so I never saw them close up. I never realised quite how much green and blue is in their feathers until now.

Balance of compliments

Geekman: "That's a nice hat. My hat makes me look like a freak."

Me: "You can wear my pink baseball cap if you'd rather."

Geekman: "Baseball caps just look freaky in general."

Me: "Are you saying I should stop wearing it too?"

Geekman: "No. It looks good on you. It's like supermodels. They can wear a paper bag and it looks great."

**************

Ten minutes later, when I have just about finished swooning over such a lovely compliment, we are walking outside in the worst heat we've had so far this summer, and I am holding my arms out from my sides a little to try and drip dry.

Geekman: "You look like a lumbering gorilla."

I give him The Look of Doom.

Geekman: "What?! I complimented you earlier!"

I love Geekman's parents

We have been pressuring them to tell us what they would like for Christmas. Today we received this email.

Hi [Geekman],

I have thought what I want for Christmas. Cranberry jam. Mamma wants the same so maybe we could have a jar each?

Pappa

Rosella school: the version with pictures

Learning about glass, and how it makes eating difficult when it stands between you and your birdseed.



Learning about "up". And how it puts the birdseed slightly out of reach. (Hint: you're a bird. Use those wings.)



Tired and pensive after all this hard learning stuff.

There goes the rosella training schedule

I was unemployed for a whole 16 hours.

My lecturing contract officially expired at midnight last night, and I spent most of today procrastinating on revising my CV to send to HR for them to put it in their giant bin of potential temp manpower. At 4pm I decided I was being ridiculous procrastinating on such a simple task, and that if I carried on like this I would have no income all summer and only myself to blame.

I opened the file—

—and there was a knock at the door.

The department wants me to create a website for... well, they don't quite know yet. They think it should be for graduate students. In the department. For them to share their research. But maybe also for other students from other departments so that we can lure them in with the awesomeness of linguistics and then poach them. And maybe it should appeal to international prospective students as well. Because they pay fees. So it will need information about studying here. Or maybe it should be secret and password protected so that people will feel comfortable sharing work in progress.

Hey, we know! Why don't you just create the website and THEN we'll decide what it's for?

I can see this job stretching over many, many meetings...

Which could be really rather lucrative.

What I do now I'm officially unemployed

Have begun a rigorous training program to teach my favourite rosella critical thinking. So far it has passed two tests with flying (ha!) colours, and we are working on a third.

Important questions

I realised I haven't been blogging much of substance of late. Well, I'm going to blame that on the fact that I have been totally paralysed by an all-consuming question: which chocolate bars to buy. Let's see if you can all help me out.

The supermarket near campus has started getting in all sorts of crazy imported American treats. Not only the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and Butterfinger bars that it has stocked for over a year now, but recently the imports have also expanded to new and unfathomable creatures with names like Milk Duds, Oh Henry Bars, Junior Mints, 100 Grands, Whatchamacallits, Zero bars, and 3 Musketeers. (They are also now selling Cherry Coke, Root Beer, and Dr Peppers, but these don't interest me beyond mere intellectual curiosity, since I'm not a fan of fizzy drinks.)

So my question to those in the know is: which of these chocolate bars are worth the excessive price tag and environmental damage of imported chocolate? (I have to admit that I fully believe both Butterfingers and Reese's are worth every centimeter of rising sea levels, but Hershey's kisses, not so much.)

If it helps your answer, my non-American (un-American?) chocolate preferences are as follows:

Nougat Honey Logs, Crunchie bars, Pixie Caramels, Pinky bars, Picnic bars, Moro bars: I would swim across an ocean to get my hands on these.

Mars bars, Milo bars, Perky Nanas, Milky bars: I would walk across a few football fields for one.

Cherry Ripes, Bounty Bars, Milky Ways: I might bother to get out of bed if it was being offered in the next room.

Aero bars, Kit kats, plain chocolate, anything with wafers in it: Unless I was really desperate, you'd have to pay me to eat one of these.

The War on Birdseed

Now that the rosellas have stopped being scared of the wood pigeons, these scenes are pretty much representative of the on-going defensive action.



(And yes, I am using my Macbook powers for good.)

Never fails to make me happy

I finally managed the necessary contortions to lean out the window with my camera in one hand and birdseed in the other. Which meant I got (along with crampy arms and shoulders) at least 30 photos of a windowsill where a parrot had just stepped out of the picture.

I just realised this is my 1000th blog post. Kind of fitting, really.

Geekman gives a lesson in driver safety

"Geekman, did you know the speed limit here is 70? You're only doing 60."

"The speed limit isn't compulsory. You're meant to drive to the conditions."

I look at the clear sky, and the dry, well-lit, empty road. "What conditions are you driving to?"

"Tight trousers."

Crazy answers from student exams

Question: Although Old English had contact both with Celtic languages and Romance languages, it was far more heavily influenced by Romance than Celtic. Explain briefly why this was.

Actual student answers:

"The Celts were inferior."

"The Romans were more evolved."

"Dutch is very similar to English." (Yes, I know: WTF?)

"Celtic was always a minority language." (What, including when it was the ONLY language family in the country?)

"Language influence generally spreads from the people conquering to the people who get conquered. Romance conquered the French, and the French conquered the Celts, and the Anglo-Saxons conquered the English. Celts didn't conquer anybody. They just fought a lot. So only the Anglo-Saxons and Romance languages influenced English."

Almost, but... no.

And this is why 90% of the exam was problem sets rather than short answers. Otherwise if the giggling fits didn't kill me, the urge to throw myself or my students off a bridge would.

Special consideration

I'm marking exam scripts this week, and for the first time it strikes me that I'm actually going to have to do something about all the special consideration requests that I've been putting in my binder with a mental, "Poor kid. Of course I'll bear this in mind."

Note that these are exams with clear right and wrong answers: think maths rather than English literature. So does special consideration mean I should give them partial credit for wrong answers? Should I mark normally and then scale their grade up a bit? If so, what reasons deserve what degree of scaling? Does the student who miscarried last week get bumped up higher than the one whose uncle just died, or vice versa? Does the fact that a student who gets panic attacks stopped writing in the middle of a sentence halfway through and never finished the exam mean she was panicking? And if so, do I give her partial credit for questions she never even attempted? Does a minor car accident an hour before the exam trump finding your budgie dead in its cage?

Assuming university systems in other places have something similar to "special consideration" requests, what do you do about them?

This blog has crossed a threshold

A threshold relating to the percentages of people who read here who I know in real life. It has reached the point where I find myself unable to post about a visit to the gynecologist.

So I won't.

Even though it makes a rather good story.

At a loss

My students had their final exam today. As I faced the rows of pale, tragic-looking faces at the start, I noticed something very odd: a student who I had never seen before in my life. I went and inspected her ID and she is indeed enrolled in the course. But she hasn't completed any of the course work. Hasn't attended a single class. And had the wrong textbook sitting in front of her (for an open-book exam).

I have absolutely no idea why she was taking the exam, since it was only worth 30% of the grade, and she hasn't got any of the other 70% at all. It can't be that she didn't know there was other assessment. She is a third-year student, and there are few, if any, courses at this university where the exam is even worth more than 50%, let alone the full grade. She can't be expecting useful feedback, since they don't get their papers returned, and she won't even get a grade, just an NCN on her transcript for "incomplete". So I don't even have to look at her answers (although I did, and it looks like she probably would have scraped a pass).

The mystery isn't why a student would enrol in the course and not attend classes or do the work. We get that all the time, from students who need to be enrolled (but not pass) in order to keep their student visas. The mystery is why she bothered with the exam.

Any theories?

Once again, physicists view the world differently

Geekman: "How did you get bruises from kicking a rugby ball?"

Me: "I wasn't kicking it. It was hitting me."

Geekman: "Relativity bites."