The cool kids

Oliver and I, the cool kids at the back of the bus. On the way back from the mayoral dinner at SAIP. On the other side, at the back, were Richard (taking the photo) and Sean.

I'm such a girl

I was walking down High Street today feeling tired and bleh and I bumped into a guy I know. Who said "How are you? You are looking radiant..."
:)
I felt instantly cheerful. I'm such a girl!

I can do it too!

I can do the salt trick too!

In the background, Nicole. With hot chocolate and a marshmellow. Nicole and Romona came over for dinner - they are great.

SAIP

Last week I was at the SAIP (South African Institute of Physics) conference at UWC. I heard some good talks, some completely-over-my-head talks and gave a talk myself. Posters for preference in the future!

I also met a great bunch of people - some UKZN guys (Sean and Angela and Michel (sp?) and some undergrads too) and some UJ people, a couple of old Rhodians (Ingle Gledhill and David Roux) and saw the Hermanus people and HartRAO people.

"Science is sometimes a very human interpretation of nature." Harm Moraal

The picture at the top is Richard Grant's party trick, from the Banquet on the last evening!

The power of the arts

"When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake"
- Plato

Its the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown at the moment. Today I went to see a play called Prodigal, written and directed by a couple of people I know. I just went to support really, but I was actually so... impressed is the wrong word. It was really moving, the story was good, the acting was good. It made me cry and it made me think and feel. I reccommend it.

Kim

This post in about Kim McAlpine. Kim is my travel partner at the moment - we are in Cape Town to see our supervisor, Dr Athol Kemball. Kim is the intrepid driver who whizzes us around Cape Town in our rental Citi Golf and endures my apalling navigation skills with good cheer. We are staying in her sister Susan's house. The picture above is Kim with her sister's cat, Possm. Possm is somewhat psychotic. He is a wild panther trapped in the body of a stripey kitten. Which is no good for the couches :)

Anyway, Kim is doing a Physics/Astronomy MSc. You can see her Physics page here. She is very with it when it comes to things Physics/Mathsy and she has even approx. mastered AIPS, quite a feat. I admire how she is determined to figure things out properly, to understand things properly.

What else? Kim has an adorable dog named Max, who she dotes on. She is a stirling pet owner, which says alot about a person I think. Kim is also into all sorts of cool things like scuba-diving. She is adventurous like that. She has a cute house which she invests hours into making pretty. In fact, I think Kim is into beautiful things. From her house to her clothes, to enduring with eye makeup.

Kim is the social coordinator of the Physics department, and is (to use a terribly cheesy phrase, which is nonetheless true) "loved by all." She only had to complain of the heat and our lab got two airconditioners! :) She is very friendly and hospitable.

She is great to travel with because she makes up for me being shy :) And she is fun. And interesting. And is brave enough to drive in Cape Town.

C.S. Lewis quotes

Some fantastic C.S. Lewis quotes:

"A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading."

"Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable."

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."

"Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities."

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

"I gave in, and admitted that God was God."

For Oliver & Nathan:
"The real Oxford is a close corporation of jolly, untidy, lazy, good-for-nothing humorous old men, who have been electing their own successors ever since the world began and who intend to go on with it. They'll squeeze under the Revolution or leap over it when the time comes, don't you worry."

"There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way.""

"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."

And the grand finale:
"You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me."
:)

(from this page)

Minoshni

Over the weekend I was chatting to someone (Donnae!), and Minoshni's name came up as one of my digs mates. And Donnae asked "Who is Minoshni??" Presumably she was intrigued by references to Minz on this very blog.

So this post is about Minoshni, or Minz (or Doo, if you are Mutsa). You can see her on the right in the picture on the top, its a pic of the grad garden party.

Minoshni is very cool. She likes her feet, she had fuzzy pink gloves but now they are gone :(
She is an uber-cool DJ. And a journalist. She may become an investigative journalist and go undercover as a janitor. She looks after a beautiful work web page and a blog. Check out her blog for info on India, cricket, and the life of Minoshni.

She runs the yearly RMR Cuppa for CANSA, she runs the Ad team for Cue, she does the RMR ABSA Top 40. Evidence of the fact that she is multi-talented! And a brilliant leader, I alway love listening to Minoshni's Leadership Tips.

She may or may not start an exciting training business which we came up with in the kitchen, some years ago. She is learning french. She is very grown up with all sorts of things like life insurance. She likes princess movies, like me.

I'd better get back to work, so I'll wrap off with "Minoshni is cool." :)

Graduation 2006

This year John and I graduated together, which was rather nice. This is the best photo from my brother's camera (the rest are not that great), especially for Minoshni :)

The Breakfast Table of The Lord

I've been doing some blog surfing recently, having found Dilly's blog, and Carla's and Danie's and, heck, Natalie's and Lindsey's and Donnae's and so on and so on. Which has made me feel that my blog is decidedly unspiritual. Which is fine, Fridges and Kepler are important too. There is no sacred/secular divide!! :)
Anyway, last night in Bible School I got thinking about... the breakfast table of the Lord. So this is my semi-spiritual post on... The Breakfast Table of The Lord.

"You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies" Psalm 23:5
I have this image of The Table of The Lord in my head. Its really long, there are lots of people at it, they're having a great time and celebrating. Kindof like Christmas dinner with the family. Except with goblets and stuff. I don't know why, but tables with kings have to be partially medieval. Sounds great. Like the Audio Adrenalin song Big House: "A big big table, with lots and lots of food" :) (Also, a big big yard were we can play football.)
Anyway, then I got thinking, what about the breakfast table of the Lord? As opposed to the party/dinner tbale of the Lord. The atmosphere at the breakfast table of the Lord must be completely different. A breakfast table is alot smaller, for one. More intimate really, at breakfast its mostly just family. And its me as I am at the breakfast table. Still kindof groggy from sleep. Maybe still in my PJ's, in my glasses, hair a mess. Probably haven't brushed my teeth yet. But thats fine, because its breakfast. And the breakfast table is very chilled out. You don't have to even talk really, if you don't want to. Breakfast is a good time for comfortable silences. Or if you do want to chet, you can chat about your day to come, your yesterday. Just livin' life stuff.

So as for me, I want a place at the dinner table of the Lord, definately. I want to celebrate and laugh and praise and rejoice. But I also want my all bran and tea at the breakfast table of the Lord, in my blue bunny pyjamas.

A Fridge

I bought a fridge today. Scary stuff, very Grown-Up. But the Lord is good!
"The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it." Proverbs 10:22

Now I just need to make a plan to get it delivered to my flat. Any ideas anyone? Apparently you should transport it upright. Its a Defy fridge, which I am really happy about because they have 2 year warantees and apparantly they are very good about fixing things if the need arises. Hooray.
I looked for a picture of it to put here for y'all to see (google images!). I battled to find the right one by gooling "defy fridge," so I just tried "defy." And then I didn't find any pictures of fridges! Certainly not in the first rew pages of results anyway. And aweful lot of "Defy Gravity" though :) Its funny how we figure out these "laws" about the world and then we are excited about the thought of breaking them.

As good a place as any

This is as good a place as any to note down a few linux commands I always manage to forget:

• How to untar afile.tar
• tar -xvf afile.tar
• How to untar and unzip afile.tar.gz
• tar -xvzf afile.tar.gz
• How to see how much memory is taken up by certain directories or what not
• du
  
• du -h (Human readable - using K and M)
• du -m (Gives size in Megabytes, M)
  

Thinking God's thoughts after Him

Kepler still only has half a brain, I am afraid. Hda is in hospital. Fortunately, Kepler is hardy and I can still do most things with but half a brain... especially considering the half I have is still 80 Gigs :)
Kepler, incidentally, was the one to use the phrase "thinking God's thoughts after Him."

On another note, I have to do a short talk for the Physics 1E1 students tomorrow about... problem solving skills?? I have to think about it now -> back to work!

My poor Kepler

My poor computer Kepler is sick. His second hard-drive, my data drive (which, strangely, is hda), is on its way out. You can see him undergoing open heart surgery in the picture. And you can see the scary error messages on the screen on the left. Like "Uncorrectable Error" "Input/Output error".

I realised after the Bible School quiz last night that I really hadn't learned hard enough for Life of Faith. Its funny, but I think if I had to redo my undergrad now I would not do nearly as well. Tests and stuff just don't motivate me anymore. But it actually isn't good enough, and I need to learn properly for ENLI quizzes. And of course, work on my academic work ethic too :) Its not that I have a terrible work ethic, although its not the best at the moment, but as things change and goals change and the way you work changes, and studies become a heck of a lot more flexible, it becomes quite difficult. To motivate yourself, and to work to SERIOUSLY long term goals. Why work 9 - 5 today for a project only due in 2 years? But I must, because I enjoy it and because I want to work in a way that glorifies God, and because there are still standards, although they are less tangible now.

One runs the risk of weeping a little

"One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed"
-- The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I re-read The Little Prince yesterday, and its sadder than I remember. But perhaps its just because I was sad at the time of reading.

Boas from the inside and boas from the outside.

On an entirely different note, I was thinking about this verse recently:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (NIV) Romans 8:28

Amazing. Does that mean that God will really use all of my mess-ups, my selfish acts, things I have done with terrible motives and so forth... for good? Wonderful. Freeing.

My poem

A poem I wrote some years ago... :)

"for my best friend:

The Toffy-Apple Song

You are sweeter than toffy-apples
and sticky sticky like
i couldn't get rid of You
even if i wanted to
like to be without you would
not to be me
You are yellower than a
scribbled sun
6 lines and a circle
waxy bright
You are lighter than a red
fizz-pop
You make me implode
explode
implode into a ball of mirth
and i love you like marshmellows.

-- LL Richter"

Laura and I

Laura and I get along rather well, its great. Especially considering we have to spend alot of time together.

We like the same kinds of books. We laught at the same types of jokes. Although I think she can be a bit silly sometimes. We both love companionable silences. And Nicole Nourdeman. We like the same kinds of foods... although, sometimes she is too lazy to cook. So I cook for her, once in a while :) And of course, she shares my love of tomatos. And chocolate.

We even have the same favourite colour. Its bizarre. I like having her around :)

The rape of Mr Smith

I was going through a pile of my old papers a while back and I found a mock interview I had written out (from the net), of a guy who had been mugged. The interview is making a point about rape and how rape victims are treated. I looked about and found a similar interview on the net here. Its worth a read, I think.

Photo Blogs

I love photo blogs. Roger's blog is an excellent example. But then, he takes spectacular photos too, so maybe his blog isn't typical. At any rate, I don't have a digital camera so a full photo blog is not viable (and I recently lost most of the data, including photos, on my laptop due to a monumentally stupid "upgrade" attempt). Nonetheless, let me entertain you with the few photos I have hanging around on my hard drive.

The picture at the top is of my third year "Control and Optimasation" math class. From the left: Me (not the best picture!), Dr Remsing (lecturer), Harold, Adam, Razvan. Sitting upstairs in the math library, after a lecture. Aaah yes, back when I was an undergrad. Adam used to bring jelly math shapes to tuts.

Public Service Announcement

This announcement brought to my blog-reading public, dedicated to Jateen in response to his comment on my previous post.

I am, in the eloquent words of Oliver, a parsimonious shopper. I feel
strongly about paying the smallest possible amount for any given product.
This leads me on trails through Checkers, Clicks and Pick 'n Pay in search
of the cheapest possible All Bran Flakes, for example, or specials on Lux
Soap.

Last week my quest was for toilet paper. I usually get the plain 1-ply
Twinsaver, and that was my plan on this occasion. Since I was doing a big
bi-weekly shop, I thought I may as well buy bulk and keep costs down. So I
found sets of 4 rolls of toilet paper, and put one in my basket. I casually
looked at the single rolls to see how much money I was saving by buying in
bulk.

To my horror, I saw that it is, in fact, cheaper (per item) to buy single
rolls of Twinsaver toilet paper than the packets for four. We are being had.

Let me repeat that, as a warning to you all:
It is cheaper, per roll, to buy single rolls of 1-ply twinsaver toilet paper
than to buy packs of four.

Do not be taken in! Buy single rolls!