Settling in

I'm having a tough time today. I'm lacking motivation and I'm feeling a little at sea. I think it's just a combination of poor sleep, with a touch of culture shock and a pinch of homesickness.

My brother was playing at WOMAD last weekend and apparently had a fabulous time. I'm super proud of my little brother and his achievements within music. I saw his photos on facebook and was stoked to see the large crowd that they played to on the Sunday. I heard interviews with another band member and heard a bit of their set from the WOMAD pages. I would have liked to have been home when he got back to get all the goss on the weekend. He tells me that they were played on JJJ on the weekend too.

My Opa has finished his chemo and radiation therapy, but is still feeling sore in the arsular region. He said it's getting better, pain-wise, which is good. But I'd still like to be around so I could go and visit him again. It was Oma's birthday on the weekend too. They had a good time though, so that's good n that.
My best mate, JJF, just had his vasectomy (hope you don't mind me sharing that babe) and is a little tender in the nadular region.

I've been able to call all these people, plus others, since being here. While it's great to be able to talk to them all, it's just not the same as being at home. I have such limited times available to call when we are all awake and with it. It's slightly frustrating.

What else is frustrating me is sleep. We have a very small bed. Those who keep up to date with faceplant know that I've been whinging about our bed. It's 120cm across. It's freaking tiny. Combine that with a heater that you can't turn off and it's all just a bit difficult to sleep. In order to keep the heat down, we open the window a little, but that lets in a lot of noise from the street. I feel like I can't win. We're trying an experiment tonight though. The boy is going to sleep on the couch and see if I'm able to sleep when I have some more room. I think it's a no-brainer. I'm totally going to be able to sleep if there is more space. But it's worth doing the experiment before we waste money on a new bed that doesn't solve the problem. With that said, I have spent a bit of time on the IKEA website today, looking at beds. I think I've found the one we would be happy with, 160cms wide, with storage in the base and it's cheap!

The other thing that is a little bit bothersome is that my boss is absent from work today, and was absent yesterday. It's good though too, she's absent because her son is sick and she can do a lot of her work from home. But it's bad, because she was going to do some experiments with me today, looking at our mutant embryos. I still need help finding everything, including bench space in the lab. But apparently she'll be in after lunch today, so I hope that we can get a bit done. She's been rather busy of late, submitting a paper and helping a student prepare for a thesis defence. I think, though, that it'll be good to have her back in the lab today to help me out with these cool mutant embryos.

So, to the positive elements of being here, so you don't think it's all woe and botheration. We have some cool mutant flies from a guy in Germany and found out that they have a tracheal (the model we work on) phenotype, so I have work to do that will not only be interesting, but might actually get me a publication. I've already instituted some things in the lab that are appreciated. The control of genetically modified organisms here is much less strict than Australia. Our fly room consists of a corridor like room with doors open at both ends, and my 'quarantine' of flies consists of keeping them on my desk until I know they don't have mites. It's great! We live really close to work and to pretty much everything. There are a lot of good restaurants near us. I've been able to go running. We've seen snow. I love a lot of the dairy products on offer here, especially this 'almost yoghurt/almost milk' stuff that you can get in different flavours. I've been having a raspberry one on my muesli in the mornings and it's great. Oh, and spring is coming, which means it's getting greener and greener here. I'll post photos of our bulbs and their crazy blooming that they've got going on soon.

Right, best be off, I'm probably supposed to be working now.