Yes, it once again has been another week since my last post, and some of my readers have mentioned this to me.
Since my last post regarding stress at work, the situation has kind of resolved itself, but it did not turn out for the better. In a brief nutshell, I had taken on a student as the associate supervisor. As part of the duties and role that I believed I was doing, I said a few criticisms of the students main supervisor directly to the supervisor during a meeting with the student. I felt that this was important, to indicate to the student that I had been listening to their concerns and were addressing them. Needless to say, the supervisor did not appreciate this, and wrote a six page retort about my behaviour to me, carbon copied to some other people in the department. I was pretty annoyed at that myself, and I wrote my own reply, which clocked in at eight pages.
The resulting chaos from my response was that the student no longer has an associate supervisor, nor do they have a supervisor LOL. In fact, the entire project and student-supervisor relationship is broken. The student now needs to look for a new project and supervisor but if one can not be found, they go home (being an international). At this point, the student is still looking.
The middle of the week was fairly unproductive in most parts, I spent some time doing literature, reading some papers on crystallisation without much real knowledge happening.
On Friday, I took around a new student in our research group to get them sorted. They had arrived from Kolkata, India, on Thursday, and I helped them out by showing them the Graduate School of Engineering, the Student Centre, Fisher Library (where I managed to lose them....) and also run them through some basic information and procedures along with getting keys and swipe card access sorted.
That afternoon was training as per usual, nothing exciting. After training however was a bit of a mad dash to get to where I was staying (House Sitting) to dump my stuff, feed the cat, then head out for dinner. It was someones birthday and we had arranged for dinner at Setsuma at the Mandarin Club down in Chinatown. I bought a cake earlier in the day at BreadTop, and left it there to pick up on my way downtown, which I did, and I still managed to walk down faster than it took some of them to bus down, even though I had to stop off at the house and head back (ie, I backtracked in the opposite direction at one point).
Dinner was interesting. Originally, the planning was for about seventeen people. Bookings is always an issue. In any case, due to being a dinner after kendo training, there was a semi-obligation to let people come to a dinner with you, even if you hadn't originally invited anyone or anything like that. The seventeen ballooned into twenty-four people, and the staff at the restaurant were kind enough to shuffle a lot of furniture around to accomodate the extra seven people involved. Additionally to this, it made for a more chaotic dinner of sorts, since some of the things ordered on our table went to the other table and they ate it without knowing, nor paying for it.
I had two dishes, a sashi/sushi set with ten peices, and then a katsu/tempura set of scallops, prawns and oysters which was very nice. I also got to try a little of the eggplant and duck entree, and some miso hotpot. While the prices at this place are a little expensive, the quality I felt was very good, and worth the cost. I had a green tea with endless refills. At the end of the night, my little green tea cake got sliced up to twenty-two slices by some miracle (two people left earlier) and so cake was to be had. The total bill for our table came to $492.90, and $310 for the other table. I paid the bill with my credit card first, and then collected money off people. However, as per usual, with large groups, there is always the tendancy to fall short, especially when people don't pay for dishes they didn't get because they got sent to the other table and no-one can recollect... I ended up being quite a bit short. The service was very good I felt in at least how they served us and accomodated the increased booking size, so I gave them a $40 tip, which for a $800 bill, is reasonable. Of course, I didn't have to tip, but we were the last group to leave, and as being uni bums, we did of course make somewhat a mess with our eating and all the multiple bogu bags around the place.
Post dinner, we went just down the street to have icecream at French Riviera, and some of them got drinks, I got a iced coffee, and some of them got the Maxi, otherwise known to me as Tower of Doom. They couldn't finish it, so they had to call for reinforcements from the drink people and they cleared it eventually.
Post dessert, people just went home. I walked with someone to Central Station cos it was late and they have a bum knee lol, and then a brisk walk home to where I was staying in Redfern. Walking with $300 odd in your pocket in cash in one of the lesser safe neighbourhoods in town is a fun experience, but I was pretty serious faced, walked with a heavy step (you could hear my footsteps quite clearly since I had boots on) and briskly. I think people probably wouldn't have approached me anyway. I got a call and a message on my way home and when I was having a shower/getting ready for bed which asked me to take the beginners at training for the Saturday.
Saturday started early for me, where I went across to Coles in Broadway and bought some groceries for the dinner I was going to make on Saturday night. I had already done some shopping prior to that so I only needed the fresher ingredients. I went back to the house and marinated the chicken with the spices for the fajitas that we were going to have for dinner, and also set the jelly/sponge/custard trifle for dessert. Once that was done, I ducked into my office to clear my emails etc and headed to training.
I took beginners, and missed out on Shiai practice, but it wasn't too big a deal. I don't know if I did a good job with the beginners or not, but I guess I did okay, they showed some signs of understanding what I thought I told them to do. The problem is that I don't know the routine that the other guys who normally take them do, so being asked to take them, it's a bit difficult to stick to schedule and their methods... I don't think I messed them up though.
Once training was over, I headed back to the house and began chopping. I chopped a lot of vegetables lol. Onion, Capscicum, Mushrooms. I then also prepared guacamole from fresh avocado, made punch with ai-yu jelly, ginger beer, lemonade and real lemon, and also entree of rockmelon and pruciutto. Then I sat playing my PSP until people came over for dinner.
I think dinner went alright, people ate all of the food with the exception of the entree and dessert. We talked about a lot of different things, and had lots of laughs, and then Earth Hour came along. For those of you unfamiliar with Earth Hour, it's when you turn off all your lights and appliances that you can afford to turn off, for an hour. It's more of a symbolic thing than anything else, since if you light up a candle during the hour, you're generating more carbon dioxide and fumes/emmissions from your candle than a electric bulb would..... Anyway, we sat in total darkness for an hour talking, which was pretty good. Then later in the night, people went home.
Sunday, we had some light beginner bogu training. Hung around a little afterwards and watched a little of the State Dan Team training before heading back to the house to clean up. I did the washing and drying and re-made the bed before leaving the house and drove home. Fairly uneventful as such.
Monday itself was also uneventful to the point that I did more literature and that was about it. Training was alright, waza stuff then at the end, we had some more shiai practice, and then disaster struck. I lent my best shinai out to someone, and misfortune led to it being destroyed. Two of the slats broke clean through and rendered the shinai 100% dead. I kept the other two slats since someone told me I should make a frankenshinai out of them eventually.
Then there was today. Yet another spectacular uneventful day really. In preparation for my trip overseas however, I bought a new suitacase with a TSA lock on it. My luggage before has always been cheap bags and soft ones at that, so this time, I decided to get a hard case one, and it supposedly has a ten year warrenty on it
Besides that, nothing else has happened except me contemplating new shinai to get, including the possiblity of getting carbon shinai.
Oh, yeah, I forgot, did some stuff on Friday for the Goro Nickel Project, with some results that came from a mini-experiment on Monday, but it wasn't that exciting since the problem is still an absolute mystery.
So there you go folks, a week in review.
Since my last post regarding stress at work, the situation has kind of resolved itself, but it did not turn out for the better. In a brief nutshell, I had taken on a student as the associate supervisor. As part of the duties and role that I believed I was doing, I said a few criticisms of the students main supervisor directly to the supervisor during a meeting with the student. I felt that this was important, to indicate to the student that I had been listening to their concerns and were addressing them. Needless to say, the supervisor did not appreciate this, and wrote a six page retort about my behaviour to me, carbon copied to some other people in the department. I was pretty annoyed at that myself, and I wrote my own reply, which clocked in at eight pages.
The resulting chaos from my response was that the student no longer has an associate supervisor, nor do they have a supervisor LOL. In fact, the entire project and student-supervisor relationship is broken. The student now needs to look for a new project and supervisor but if one can not be found, they go home (being an international). At this point, the student is still looking.
The middle of the week was fairly unproductive in most parts, I spent some time doing literature, reading some papers on crystallisation without much real knowledge happening.
On Friday, I took around a new student in our research group to get them sorted. They had arrived from Kolkata, India, on Thursday, and I helped them out by showing them the Graduate School of Engineering, the Student Centre, Fisher Library (where I managed to lose them....) and also run them through some basic information and procedures along with getting keys and swipe card access sorted.
That afternoon was training as per usual, nothing exciting. After training however was a bit of a mad dash to get to where I was staying (House Sitting) to dump my stuff, feed the cat, then head out for dinner. It was someones birthday and we had arranged for dinner at Setsuma at the Mandarin Club down in Chinatown. I bought a cake earlier in the day at BreadTop, and left it there to pick up on my way downtown, which I did, and I still managed to walk down faster than it took some of them to bus down, even though I had to stop off at the house and head back (ie, I backtracked in the opposite direction at one point).
Dinner was interesting. Originally, the planning was for about seventeen people. Bookings is always an issue. In any case, due to being a dinner after kendo training, there was a semi-obligation to let people come to a dinner with you, even if you hadn't originally invited anyone or anything like that. The seventeen ballooned into twenty-four people, and the staff at the restaurant were kind enough to shuffle a lot of furniture around to accomodate the extra seven people involved. Additionally to this, it made for a more chaotic dinner of sorts, since some of the things ordered on our table went to the other table and they ate it without knowing, nor paying for it.
I had two dishes, a sashi/sushi set with ten peices, and then a katsu/tempura set of scallops, prawns and oysters which was very nice. I also got to try a little of the eggplant and duck entree, and some miso hotpot. While the prices at this place are a little expensive, the quality I felt was very good, and worth the cost. I had a green tea with endless refills. At the end of the night, my little green tea cake got sliced up to twenty-two slices by some miracle (two people left earlier) and so cake was to be had. The total bill for our table came to $492.90, and $310 for the other table. I paid the bill with my credit card first, and then collected money off people. However, as per usual, with large groups, there is always the tendancy to fall short, especially when people don't pay for dishes they didn't get because they got sent to the other table and no-one can recollect... I ended up being quite a bit short. The service was very good I felt in at least how they served us and accomodated the increased booking size, so I gave them a $40 tip, which for a $800 bill, is reasonable. Of course, I didn't have to tip, but we were the last group to leave, and as being uni bums, we did of course make somewhat a mess with our eating and all the multiple bogu bags around the place.
Post dinner, we went just down the street to have icecream at French Riviera, and some of them got drinks, I got a iced coffee, and some of them got the Maxi, otherwise known to me as Tower of Doom. They couldn't finish it, so they had to call for reinforcements from the drink people and they cleared it eventually.
Post dessert, people just went home. I walked with someone to Central Station cos it was late and they have a bum knee lol, and then a brisk walk home to where I was staying in Redfern. Walking with $300 odd in your pocket in cash in one of the lesser safe neighbourhoods in town is a fun experience, but I was pretty serious faced, walked with a heavy step (you could hear my footsteps quite clearly since I had boots on) and briskly. I think people probably wouldn't have approached me anyway. I got a call and a message on my way home and when I was having a shower/getting ready for bed which asked me to take the beginners at training for the Saturday.
Saturday started early for me, where I went across to Coles in Broadway and bought some groceries for the dinner I was going to make on Saturday night. I had already done some shopping prior to that so I only needed the fresher ingredients. I went back to the house and marinated the chicken with the spices for the fajitas that we were going to have for dinner, and also set the jelly/sponge/custard trifle for dessert. Once that was done, I ducked into my office to clear my emails etc and headed to training.
I took beginners, and missed out on Shiai practice, but it wasn't too big a deal. I don't know if I did a good job with the beginners or not, but I guess I did okay, they showed some signs of understanding what I thought I told them to do. The problem is that I don't know the routine that the other guys who normally take them do, so being asked to take them, it's a bit difficult to stick to schedule and their methods... I don't think I messed them up though.
Once training was over, I headed back to the house and began chopping. I chopped a lot of vegetables lol. Onion, Capscicum, Mushrooms. I then also prepared guacamole from fresh avocado, made punch with ai-yu jelly, ginger beer, lemonade and real lemon, and also entree of rockmelon and pruciutto. Then I sat playing my PSP until people came over for dinner.
I think dinner went alright, people ate all of the food with the exception of the entree and dessert. We talked about a lot of different things, and had lots of laughs, and then Earth Hour came along. For those of you unfamiliar with Earth Hour, it's when you turn off all your lights and appliances that you can afford to turn off, for an hour. It's more of a symbolic thing than anything else, since if you light up a candle during the hour, you're generating more carbon dioxide and fumes/emmissions from your candle than a electric bulb would..... Anyway, we sat in total darkness for an hour talking, which was pretty good. Then later in the night, people went home.
Sunday, we had some light beginner bogu training. Hung around a little afterwards and watched a little of the State Dan Team training before heading back to the house to clean up. I did the washing and drying and re-made the bed before leaving the house and drove home. Fairly uneventful as such.
Monday itself was also uneventful to the point that I did more literature and that was about it. Training was alright, waza stuff then at the end, we had some more shiai practice, and then disaster struck. I lent my best shinai out to someone, and misfortune led to it being destroyed. Two of the slats broke clean through and rendered the shinai 100% dead. I kept the other two slats since someone told me I should make a frankenshinai out of them eventually.
Then there was today. Yet another spectacular uneventful day really. In preparation for my trip overseas however, I bought a new suitacase with a TSA lock on it. My luggage before has always been cheap bags and soft ones at that, so this time, I decided to get a hard case one, and it supposedly has a ten year warrenty on it
Besides that, nothing else has happened except me contemplating new shinai to get, including the possiblity of getting carbon shinai.
Oh, yeah, I forgot, did some stuff on Friday for the Goro Nickel Project, with some results that came from a mini-experiment on Monday, but it wasn't that exciting since the problem is still an absolute mystery.
So there you go folks, a week in review.
2 comments:
Sounds pretty interesting to me. :)
yeah... different standards for interestingness? :P
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