News: Student life
Weekend wrap-up: Stirling Market
I recently spent a Sunday at the Stirling Market.
Adelaide Farmer's Markets
One of the benefits of living in Wayville is (beyond being super close to the city), the proximity to the weekly Adelaide Farmer’s Markets, held every Sunday morning at the Adelaide Showgrounds.
Haircuts at home
I’m pretty sure my sister and I had plenty of fights growing up. With all that bickering, and considering how very different we are, I’m not quite sure how we managed to be such great friends. I’m sure there were lots of moments we wanted to pull each other’s hair - it was just the two of us after all, two siblings, only two years apart. And here we are, now in our mid-thirties during a pandemic, and I get to chop off my sister’s hair! (She asked me to!)
Of HDRs, annual reviews, and a mac and cheese toastie
I had an exceptionally reassuring Annual Review this year. I feel so very lucky to have an immensely supportive supervisory panel, but I’m also grateful to have an encouraging postgraduate coordinator. I was so motivated this week that I found myself writing into the early hours of the morning. I needed a couple of midnight snacks though. I wanted to make something easy, simple, and comforting. I also wanted to make something I could potentially turn into a lunch I could take into work the next day.
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Book reflection: Gratitude - by Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks has always been one of my favourite writers. As a neurologist, his book, The man who mistook his wife for a hat is superbly written and details the many peculiar and bizarre neurological cases he’s studied through the years. His writing is also very insightful. The New York Times calls him the ‘poet laureate of medicine’. He was able to complete a few short essays before passing away from cancer in 2015. He was eighty-two.
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Left handed
I saw a 30 second video which was a little bit stupid, but it still made me laugh. I don’t have the link, so I’m going to have to try and awkwardly describe it. I think it may have originated on TikTok, but it journeyed through the internet and found its way to me. Anyway, this video started with “how right handed people open the door” and the person opened the door normally. Then it was “how left-handed people open the door” and the person opened the door into their face.
What are your music playlists?
I have completed all my data-gathering for my doctoral thesis and now it’s down to analysis and writing. I am starting to appreciate how important music is to my process, especially having to work around my time engaging and caring for my darling nine-month old daughter. My supervisors have been so supportive and have pointed out that raising children while writing papers meant that there was hardly any time to procrastinate any more. I find myself writing in between my daughter’s naps, structuring thesis outlines on my phone while waiting for her during child care orientation, and so on. I started with just having one “Ember’s writing music” playlist and then I found myself needing different kinds of music for different types of music. I have Jane Austen-esque music for when I am composing words for this blog. When I’m trying to re-organise spreadsheets and data, or when I need to revise references and citations and don’t necessarily need to be thinking I put on music I can sing to. Sometimes they’re guilty pleasure type pop songs or the Beatles, or playlists from different decades or sometimes funk and soul classics. When I’m writing for a deadline, or writing with purpose, I have a playlist of instrumental music from movie soundtracks. Sometimes it’s from the Godfather, or Legends of the Fall or Cinema Paradiso or even Indiana Jones, among many others. I also created a playlist I listen to when I am trying to boost my confidence prior to a presentation or a talk.
Changing PhD
Many people warned me that my PhD thesis would be much more of an evolving process that a static, three-year project, but for the most part I tended to listen to their well-meaning advice and pretty much ignore it.
What's the big deal about an ear infection?
This week was a bit of a challenge for me. My nine-month old daughter picked up a bug from her play date at childcare. Our midwife and other parents have warned me about this of course, but there’s nothing like experiencing it all for the first time. I don’t know why I thought she’d never get sick. I tried really hard though. She’s up-to-date with all her immunisations, she’s had the flu shot, and she’s been having a healthy amount of probiotics in her well-balanced diet.
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Of health week and the journey back to true strength
Spring is here, and so is Health Week! I have been talking about getting back into shape for months and now I have run out of excuses. Lots of my friends have also started their fitness challenges and I’m finding a whole heap of interesting things. There are the eight-week fitness gym challenges which would be great. A couple of years back I would get up at 4 in the morning to meditate, scribe, and be mindful of all the things I am grateful for. After that it would be an hour’s workout in the nearby gym, before getting ready to head to work in the city. I don’t think I could commit to going to the gym as regularly as I used to given the demands of studying full-time, working part-time, and caring for my amazing nine-month old offspring.
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