Merry Chismukka and all that!

Hey folksies, this is not going to be a big post this time, but just a quickie to send a big merry festive period happy holiday virtual hug to everyone. The year is drawing to an end and the silly season is definitely upon us. One of the silliest things I saw this season was the rabbi of Oxford climb into a massive cherry picker to light the 3 metre tall very home-made slightly dodgy looking Hanukkia in the middle of Oxford. Only the fact that he was lighting in front of one of the most beautiful and ancient buildings in Oxford adorned with gargoyles and spires, on a stunning clear starry night lent the evening a touch of grace. Still the crowd was quite impressive for a small English town, even though there was a distinct American twang to most of their accents.
Anyway whatever you do this Chrismukka, wherever you are, whether yours is a white Christmas (like ours will be, check out our awesome snow piccies, so much fun!),a wet Christmas, a warm one or a wild one (I still have very fond memories of last years Fredders food, music, ping pong and cocktail Xmas extravaganza) make sure its a wonderful one filled with good people, great food, and plenty of golden moments.

Love you all

Shelly xx

I like snow

I never thought I would say this, but I really wish it snowed more in Oxford. Being freezing and cold is so much more enjoyable when there are little white snow flakes falling from the sky and making everything look like a picture perfect winter wonderland. About two weeks after my last post in which I said it hadn’t gotten stupidly cold yet, it got stupidly cold. But even though the rest of the country was getting snow it wasn’t until this Wednesday morning that I woke to see that Oxford was snowing and our little back courtyard and my bike were all covered in snow (not much snow, but well and truly enough for my “I grew up in the tropics” inner child). Instantly my grumbles about the cold grey weather (which are becoming a regular morning tantra now) stopped and I was happy! I was also happy to find out when I got to work that I wasn’t the only one excited and that even the folk with considerable snow-cohabiting experience were also excited about the first snow of the season. But now just two days later it’s all gone – and its back to just being stupidly cold with no reason…so here’s hoping for more, will keep you posted

Aside from snow, the other thing I realise I like a lot more than I thought is France. I really don’t know how the French ended up with such a bad wrap from the international community. Because every French person I’ve ever met has been super awesome and totally lovely – and I don’t speak a word of French (well actually after this last trip to France I now speak about 20 French words, a few of which actually form sentences). My week-long course in Montpellier was really fun, good food, great cheese, superb wine and an enjoyable week learning mark-recapture (yes I do get my geek on every now and again). I think you know that a course is going to be good when you get there for registration (and the preliminary meet and greet affair), and there is an enormous table laid out with a smorgasbord of cheeses, deli meats, olives, delicious breads and about 20 different bottles of French wine. And then the guru of your field (whose paper on mark-recapture analysis has been cited over 1600 times including at least 10 times by you) gets up and doesn’t talk about stats or anything like that but instead begins to explain in detail which cheese and meats should be eaten first, which are more pungent and can’t be eaten before the less strong cheeses, which meats are cured etc, and which wines are the best to combine with each and every one of the delicious foods on the table. I probably wasn’t the only one in the room thinking ‘awesome’, but being the only native English speaker in the room (and the only person to only speak 1 language fluently, bloody Europeans!), and the only one currently living in a country where baguettes and croissants are sold in plastic, food is highly processed or ready-made, and deep-frying is an art, I’m quite positive I was the only one thinking ‘I love France”. So the week was totally enjoyable, the weather was sunny and warm and the city was gorgeous (lots of little funky bars, cafés, patisseries down winding narrow cobbled streets) and the only disappointment was that when Cam turned up he must have brought the English weather with him as it started to rain and didn’t let up for the rest of the weekend, which ruined my plans to hire bikes and ride out to the sea to go try and find flamingos. But, oh well I have a feeling this won’t be my last voyage to France.

And then it was back to O-Fo but thankfully I didn’t have time to get all depressed about the grey weather this time as Dave and Madeleine came to town and hung out with us for a couple of awesome days spent just strolling around town, eating drinking and playing Rumikub (with the most minimal amount of time spent at work on my behalf). Come back soon guys! And now its just work, and life and trying to stay warm until Chrimbo (as they call the festive season in this part of the world) festivities will be upon us, hopefully accompanied by loads of snow! I like snow....

weather, pumpkins, and stuff

Einstein once described his theory of relativity as this “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity”. Let me add my description of relativity … “The extra hour of sleep you get when you turn back your clocks at the end of daylight savings, feels like an hour. The hour of daylight you lose at the end of the day, feels like despair”. Ok so that’s not exactly relativity but with sun now setting at 4.30pm and getting rapidly earlier every day, I think I’m entitled to a little whinge (after all I am in England). Particularly, as abundant sunlight is not exactly a feature of most of the remaining daylight hours. But to be fair, although it is definitely cold now, it hasn’t gotten really stupidly cold yet, though I’m sure that’s yet to come. However, seeing as every single building you walk into is heated, even the depths of winter probably won’t feel as cold as Tassie did, though ask me again in two months time. And at least for another week or so there are still all the beautiful autumn colours to distract from the air temperature. Oxford is truly a gorgeous sight at the moment. Every morning as I ride into work the leaves are a more brilliant shade of orange, and every day the carpet of red, orange, and yellow leaves grows under my pedalling feet. Throw in a little morning fog to shroud the old spires and gargoyles in a silent mist, and it really is a picture perfect scene.

read the rest of this story here:
http://thetravelaffair.net/affairs-of-the-heart/guy-fawkes-pumpkin-rugby/

Itching and Twitching

So back to the blogging it is. I make no apologies for the distinct lack of irreverent musings on the goings on of our UK life, but an artiste cannot force her creativity (which is another way of saying I’m a big fat slacko). But as of today I have a new resolve to recount all the happenings of life in O-Fo to all you folksies from far away. This new resolve is not only account of the fact that I have quite a few adventures to ramble on about (probably too many actually), but primarily because it is has become “properly cold” outside (or as we Australians would say “fucking cold”) which means that alternative outdoor activities are becoming decidedly less appealing.

Also I really wanted to tell you all (i.e. brag) about the fact that I saw Sir David Attenborough talk this week for free, live in the flesh. My hero (well isn’t he everyone’s?). He spoke for one thoroughly entertaining hour about Birds of Paradise and how they helped Alfred Wallace develop his theories on natural selection, giving anecdotes of his expeditions to find and film them and then had the auditorium laughing at videos showing their crazy courtship rituals. He also answered questions, including one about what his future travel plans were, to which he responded that he had already been to several countries on four continents this year including both the South Pole and the North Pole. And I thought I was a travel bug! The man is 84 years old!! May he live to 120!

So speaking of travel bugs (I hope you will appreciate the beauty of this segue way in a moment) Cam and I just got back from another little sojourn; a week in beautiful Portugal. Now don’t get me wrong - this was a really good week and we had a fun time – we swam and surfed and got to see some of the Rip Curl Pro (i.e. Kelly Slater, Taj Burrows and Co surfing) and visited castles and ate amazing seafood and were treated to lots of delicious food and great wine (Vinho Verde is my new favourite white) by my lovely family in Lisbon and Porto. But it would have been a brilliant week if it wasn’t for two little bugs. The first bug was a cold I caught before we went which meant that I was snotty the whole time – but that was ok. The second bug was terrible. Actually it was an army of bugs – bed bugs! Eeeeek! These things are horrible! I hope that none of you ever get eaten by them (they do actually live on human blood) – especially if you’re as sensitive as Campbell. Poor Cam didn’t believe me when I said that I thought the bites on my arms were bed bugs (there were only a few at this stage) and offered to take the infested bed for himself. Alas, the bugs, now invigorated from the previous nights helping of Shelly blood, feasted on the poor lad. And unlike me, his histamine reaction made all the bites go from red and incredibly itchy, as they were on me, into these huge ugly welt things (If you want to know what they look just Google bed bug bites). Anyway he looked a bit like a leper and was a bit mopey for a few days, and I’m sure he scared off a few people in Portugal, but all is well and healed now (at least the leper impersonation and the mopey part, but the spots are still kinda there, 2 weeks later, nasty nasty things).

Since my last blog post we have also managed to enjoy another little weekend travel adventure abroad, visiting ol’ Stefen in Germany a few weeks back. Although it was a truly rapid 2 ½ day visit, it was a blast and probably quite an authentic German experience. There was lots of beer drinking, lots of eating of really great bread and weird salty pickled fish (much nicer than it sounds), a bit of dancing to bad 80’s music, and some smoked trout by a bonfire. Sehr deutschen Ich glaube (or something like that).

Read the rest of this story here:
http://thetravelaffair.net/affairs-of-the-heart/twitching/
http://thetravelaffair.net/affairs-of-the-heart/catching-the-travel-bug/

The Blue Danube

So after another long hiatus, it’s back to the blogosphere for me. And seeing as there’s probably quite a lot to catch up on, I think I’ll start with the latest goings on and then work backwards.

Which means that first off is Vienna, which is where Campbell and I recently returned after spending an awesome long weekend with Beth, Rusby and Dave. We arrived Wednesday evening, found our hostel without too much trouble and then headed out to the pub across the road to catch up with Dave. The pub, Kanguru (I think it’s meant to be ironic…people confuse Austria with Australia – no! – and so Austrians think it’s funny to name their pubs after antipodean marsupials and wear Tshirts that say “no kangaroos in Austria” …go figure?!) proved a great place to hear all Dave’s tales of crazy weird dog people that he’d met at the Canine Research Conference (possibly even weirder than the bird nerds I’d met a few weeks ago…a 3day conference just about little birds that nest in holes - yes amazing but true). It was also a great place for a beer – with something like a hundred to choose from! Indeed if you like your beer and coffee you’ll like Vienna.

read the rest of this story here: http://thetravelaffair.net/travel-affairs/austrian-or-australian/

Home sweet home

Ah but I’ve gotten ahead of myself. In my love of Paris I have failed to report all the other goings on in our lives here. Firstly, I haven’t even mentioned that my super awesome friend Madeleine came to visit and that we spent a great night eating and drinking at the Jericho Tavern and a very lovely English Sunday afternoon with Mads and some of her Oxford friends, eating and drinking Pimms in the sun at The Perch – a beautiful gastro pub on the river just outside of Oxford.

And I also haven’t mentioned that we spent the following weekend in London at Madeleine’s house and had a fab party weekend with lots of BBQs, world cup watching moments, and partying Avatar style for her sister’s birthday – good to see the fancy dress party fetish extends across the seas. Madeleine – uber coolster that she is – took us to Shunt – one very cool bar in London – right inside the Tower Bridge station the bar/club/art space is situated in what used to be giant old underground wine cellars and is a totally different night out – they put on quirky shows, have trapeze artists, live eclectic music, art installations, and even make your own art areas. And on Sunday we even managed a wee bit of London sightseeing, including a little reminiscing from Cam about the months he spent living here in 2002, and from me, for the fresh-faced, starry-eyed 17 year old I was the last time I wandered the streets of London.

But mostly I have forgotten to mention that we have finally moved into our new home – well we only moved in last Thursday night and then left for Paris on Friday! We now live in Cowley – which for Brisbane folk you can consider the West End of Oxford. It is a little grungier, dirtier and cheaper than the rest of Oxford but also significantly more ethnic, more diverse gastronomically, more entertainment options, and well – more interesting. I like it. And I like our house. It is a ground floor flat in a complex that is set back of the road – so it is really quiet and private and we have a ‘garden’ – which is really just a court yard though I have plans to acquire a green thumb before summer is over (stranger things have happened). It is furnished but has no kitchen stuff (and neither do we) so this week we have slowly been acquiring stuff – it is really amazing how much stuff you need - I think today’s mission will be to buy some pots (I cooked pasta in the wok last night!). The place is decorated a little like an Art Union Prize home and our bed is only a double not a queen and the washing machine is in the kitchen which is weird. But other than it’s great. It is also literally 100m from the Magdalen Arms which was recently voted the best gastro pub in England, and which I can see becoming our regular haunt. Anyway I guess with this move all the pieces in the settling-in phase are done. We’ve been here 7 weeks already, can you believe it. Hopefully the “daily life” phase to come is just entertaining.

Gay Paris

Oh Paris how I love you so.

What an absolutely brilliant city! And that’s coming from someone who doesn’t generally like big cities. Campbell and I spent three fabulous, fun days in the Paris sun and I can honestly say it was not nearly enough. We arrived very early (especially by Parisian standards) Saturday morning, a little worse for wear after a mostly sleepless night on the bus (never again), but thankfully had no trouble negotiating the metro to our hotel. We immediately changed into shorts and thongs (did I mention it was gloriously hot) and headed out for the most welcome breakfast I’ve had in a long time. Perfectly brewed café au lait, freshly squeezed orange juice, a hot golden croissant, and a crusty white baguette with home made butter and strawberry jam. Simply delicious and oh so French. And we devoured all this in beautiful sunshine while partaking in the French people’s favourite pastime – people watching. In fact, this was to be our morning ritual for the rest of the weekend - though we switched from the café to the snack bar version after we saw the bill. And if you’re wondering how it is that French chicky babes stay so thin with all this buttery goodness in their lives (I certainly did), well, I’ll tell you; they smoke like chimneys. In fact, on occasion it felt like everyone in Paris was puffing on a cigarette. But that, and the minimal number of gardens or parks in the city are the only negative things I will say about Paris. Everything else rocks.

read the resto of this story here: http://thetravelaffair.net/travel-affairs/gay-paris/

Dinosaurs with friggin laser beams

So life is progressing quite well here in old Oxford town. Work wise I’m busy which is good and getting stuck into analyses and the like. It has been extremely quiet around the department for the last few weeks as most of the folk working on tits (either blue ones or great ones), were out doing field work. But as of yesterday the field season seems to have largely finished for most of them so there will hopefully be a little more social engagement to be had at work. I have now had two social outings (drinking nights of course) with work people and they all seem like very nice and agreeable folk and they do seem to be a reasonably social group of people – so all bodes well in that arena. Though I have to admit it is taking a little while to connect with people as friends, but I guess that takes time.

But last Friday’s after work drinks were pretty cool. There was nothing really amazing about the preliminary sit-around-a-table-at-a-bar-and-drink-beer-and-talk -shit goings on of the first few hours of the night, but at some point somebody mentioned that some kind of laser light show was about to start at the museum of natural history – and that there would be a bar serving the precious amber fluid that the Brits seem so very fond of (I’m sure half the folk wouldn’t have budged from their seats without the alcoholic incentive). And so with the promise of lasers, dinosaurs and beer, we escaped the stuffy stranglehold of the Kings Arms pub and soon found ourselves at the museum in a sea of funky 20- and 30-somethings, sipping wines and Champagnes amidst the legs of giant dinosaur and woolly mammoth skeletons in a thick blanket of smoke-machine fog, with crazy lighting effects and “laser beams” illuminating the ornate spires on the glass roof of the truly beautiful 700 year old building. Extremely strange, but quite cool – especially when I found the unbelievably minute stuffed pygmy shrew – so cute.

read the rest of this story here: http://thetravelaffair.net/travel-affairs/dinosaurs-and-laser-beams/

Fondling tits

So it seems I am a terrible blogger – two whole weeks without feeling the need to divulge the goings on of my life! Well this time, happily, I can say that it’s not for lack of goings on. The last two weeks have been busy indeed and also quite brain draining. I think all this gallivanting around the place has left me out of shape for the bump and grind (and grind) of full time work.  So I’ve officially completed the end of my second week at work. And it’s already all hands on deck, full steam ahead. My new boss, Ben (Prof. Sheldon) is great – he’s friendly, approachable, clever and remarkably normal – but is also proving to be quite a taskmaster. So I’m actually quite busy - head down bum up - organizing data and thinking about analyses and stuff, as he seems to want meetings with me every 3 days! Ah well it’ll keep me honest ;)

read the rest of this story here:
http://thetravelaffair.net/travel-affairs/fondling-tits/

Oxonians we become!

We’re in our new home in Oxford! And it’s pouring down with rain outside (who would have thought?), but at least it has given me the chance to put pen to paper, so to speak. My last few days in Israel were lovely and hot (it got up to 40oC at one point). Talia and I went shopping, swimming and ate even more humus and falafel and other generally delicious food. We also managed to fit in quick visits to some of the local towns around where Talia lives and even went for a sunset stroll at Caesaria. This is a beautiful ancient city that lies on the shores of the Mediterranean and was built around 20 BC by King Herod the Great (who as far as I can tell was only great at killing his family members and the odd rabbi or two). My memories from the last time I visited this site (as an 11yr old) are of the ruins themselves and scrambling through archways and the like. They don’t include all the high-end yuppy cafes and restaurants and pubs that are now nestled amongst the ancient ruins. Thankfully these have been very tastefully merged into the sandstone walls of the old city and it is all very beautiful indeed. If you are ever in the area I highly recommend a stroll down through the chariot racing arena to the amphitheater and back before sitting and sipping hot apple cinnamon cider in the seaside cafes while watching the sunset paint all the ruins in pink and purple as it melts into the sea. 

read the rest of this story here:
http://thetravelaffair.net/travel-affairs/oxfordians-we-become/

Israeli Adventures

It’s been 8 years since I’ve last stepped foot in Israel which is long time. Almost enough time to forget how crazy, diverse and beautiful the holy land is. But in just 5 days here I have been amply reminded of all the variety of life in my homeland. It was almost midnight when I met Talia at Ben Gurion airport after the long flight from Seoul and the place was full of people. There were more people waiting for the train into Tel-Aviv than there would be at midday Saturday in the middle of Hobart (but ok that’s not saying much).It was on the train that the first reminder of life in Israel became immediately apparent when a group of soldiers took their seats next to us complete with machine guns and ammunition belts. I think I must be getting old but its really quite amazing to think that so much of the security of this country rests in the hands of baby faced teenagers who are probably more concerned about whether they’ll pick up on the one weekend off they get a month. Still they do look somewhat more responsible and clued in to the realities of life than 17 year old Aussie kids do - but maybe that’s just the uniforms.

Read the rest of this story here:
http://thetravelaffair.net/travel-affairs/israel-isreally-sababa-1/

The Journey Begins

So the journey has begun. I have departed the beloved homeland, and begun the voyage first to the spiritual heartland and then onwards to the fabled motherland.

And now having begun with so flowery an introduction I have to confess that the flight to Seoul was utterly dull. The highlights were undoubtedly the company of Bill Bryson’s comic genius (thanks David), the in-flight magazine’s article on the artistic merits of “Important Intangible Cultural Property #102” and being offered “scrub turkey” for lunch (I’m sure that’s what she said). At any rate I touched down in Seoul bored and numb from travel and was very efficiently rounded up and out of the airport with all the other ‘hotel transferers’.

read the rest of this post here: http://thetravelaffair.net/travel-affairs/the-journey-begins/