Bank Holiday Fun

How have we been lucky enough to have such great weather on both May bank holidays this year?!?! Fingers crossed for August bank holiday too!

Last weekend consisted of:

1. A delicious greek meal and cocktails with the uni girls. I didn't realise quite how drunk I was until I got on the train home...oops.

2. 'Healthy' fry up and a Saturday stroll 3-hour trek with Becky.

We got caught up behind a herd of cows on the way to be milked

You have to paddle if you're wearing wellies!

3. Indian takeaway while watching Silver Linings Playbook with housemates. While the boy is away...

4. Sunday morning tennis, complete with sunburn after just 40 mins outside. Damn you pale english skin.

5. Finally revisiting my love for Mexican food with Ally - sweet potato, thyme and chorizo quesadillas. #amazeballs.

6. A casual bit of baking

7. My first BBQ of the year, courtesy of my supervisor. Consumed alongside a rather copious amount of wine for everyone but me (responsible designated driver over here!)

Then the work week started again and this happened. What the hell happened to the sun!?!?

I hope you had a lovely bank holiday

xxx

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Life as a PhD Student

My Dad regularly asks when I'm going to get a 'real' job. Apparently doing a PhD doesn't count.

I decided I should make my case by describing my standard week.

Monday morning arrives. First things first : are my cells alive meaning I can actually do experiments this week....

Hell yeah they are!




But after three days of waiting for an experiment to come to completion the results show nothing.




Spend the next day trying to figure out what went wrong, while looking like you know something about science.




This fails. So you start asking around for any thoughts or suggestions as to why the experiment went inexplicably wrong.




Then, suddenly, a moment of clarity.

 


When something finally works.




The end of the week arrives and it's going to be a loooooong Friday doing dissection. By the end of it I'm just like




I reckon going through that week on week for 3 years qualifies as work, even if not a 'real' job.

It's tough, but all the office cake definitely helps!




P.S. I hope you enjoyed my first ever gif post. Inspiration from Nadine at Back East Blonde












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Mexico Part 3.... Speedboats and snorkelling

I realise I got back from Cancun almost a month ago (that's gone scarily quick!) but I still have more to say!

We booked to stay in Cancun for 2 days extra after the conference finished. After another late night we spent the morning relaxing on the beach and then decided we should probably make the most of our time in Mexico and do something. Although it is pretty tough to drag yourself away from this view.

We headed out to the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the second largest reef in the world stretching from Cancun down to Honduras. The trip started with a speed boat journey through a 'jungle'. It's not exactly what I'd describe as a jungle, but it was pretty cool as it grew straight out of the sea and we got to drive our own speed boat!

Our speed boats all ready to go

Driving through a lagoon in the jungle

Heading out into the open sea to get to the reef

Looking like a proper pale tourist!

I wish I could have taken some pictures of the reef and the fish we saw. It was unreal. So many colours, shapes, patterns and sizes. No Nemo or Dory though! To encourage the fish out the snorkelling guide threw fish food around us which attracted one of the biggest fish I've ever seen.

Henry, one of my colleagues, had never snorkelled before. I kind of assumed that everyone knows how to snorkle, but it turns out they don't. He struggled so much that I think he only put his head under the water once, and declared he was 'fighting for his life'. That was as much of a highlight as the fish themselves!


That evening we went out for dinner at the craziest restaurant ever. The staff put on a weird cops and robbers hunt around the tables as we arrived, I got pulled up twice to dance, and the evening finished with us competing for a shot of tequila by withstanding electric shocks! I ducked out very quickly!

When I finally get round to it I will also do a post about the trip we took to the Mayan pyramids Chichen Itza  (one of the seven wonders of the world!). Stay tuned!






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Food, food and more food.

Blog every day in May : Day 21 (aka Day 4 for me!)


A selection of my favourite archived blog posts. I don't have many archives yet so I thought I'd go through my favourite posts by other bloggers. These all turned out to be recipes that I want to try so get ready for lots of pics of yummy looking food.


1. Japanese vegetable pancakes from Smitten Kitchen. I try and kid myself that these are healthy.

2. Spring pizza from How Sweet it is. In fact most pizzas will do it for me.

3. Goat Cheese guacamole from Shutterbean. Goats cheese and avocado in one bowl! Amazing!

4. Anything from Joy the Baker. Particularly if it involves rhubarb.

5. Steak, avocado, cheese. An epic sandwich courtesy of The Londoner.

Basically I just love looking at pictures of amazing food and salivating at my computer screen. Although I am yet to actually recreate any of these recipes. Maybe one day!

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To move or to stay??

So I have been overly pathetic at the 'Blog Every Day in May' Challenge. I'll have to rename my personal challenge to 'Blog Three Days in May.' But today's topic has reignited my interest in the whole project.
The challenge today is to talk about a struggle in your life at the minute. In all honestly I can't really complain about anything right now, particularly as I know of people going through much worse times. But I have one struggle that has been weighing on my mind for months.

Sometime before Christmas my PhD supervisor announced he was getting a new job in Bradford. I, along with two of my colleagues, have a decision to make : do we follow him to Bradford or stay put where we are.

Automatically the logical decision is to move. I mean realistically how am I supposed to finish my PhD without my supervisor.

But Bradford is 4 hours away from where I have built my life. I like where I currently work, I love where I am living and the people I'm living with, I have a lot of friends from home and uni within 30 mins from where I am now, and most of all my boyfriend is only 20 mins away. If I move this will all change.


My mind flicks between deciding to go and then deciding to stay about 10 times a day. Travelling will be expensive, moving will be a faff, I'm worried about being in a city where I know nobody and potentially renting with a group of people I don't get on with. And as my boyfriend starts as a junior Doctor in August he will be working crazy hours which  limits how often we can see each other even more.

Moving is a big risk when I'm more than happy where I am. But not moving may be a massive risk towards my PhD. It's only 15 months. I'm sure it'll fly by. No doubt I just need to man up and move. But it's a pretty scary prospect either way.

Argh! I can't decide!!!!!!






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Bank Holiday Weekend

I can't remember the last time I had such a great bank holiday weekend. Such good weather and I had plans for every day!

Friday night I went down to Southampton to see Ally. We went round to my friend Saira's house where she served her home-made chicken curry (she did tell me the proper Indian name but I've forgotten now...) We had this with dahl that Ally and his house mate cooked a for the occasion along with rice, naans and cold beers.

On Saturday I did a quick gym session for the first time since Mexico and spent the afternoon browsing the shops in Reading to pick up an outfit for the evening. It was the first time in 8 months of living together that me and all my house mates would be around on a Saturday for a proper night out.

The evening started with authentic tequila slammers straight from Mexico. We headed out to Milk Bar for cocktails and then onto Oakford's for a bit of a dance and a few more drinks. We finished the night in Purple Turtle. I've heard a lot about this bar/club but never been. It's a proper dive but it's open until 4am and is a bit of an institution on the reading nightlife scene. I only managed about half an hour there by which time it was 2am, I was hungry, too drunk and developing blisters. So we grabbed a cab home via our local burger van.


To clear our heads the next day those of us that weren't so hungover that we couldn't move from our beds went on a walk. There's a really nice park on top of a hill behind our flat that only I had been to before. You can see all of Reading from the hill and it was a perfect spot for a late afternoon hangover-clear out.

Monday was the BEST day. We went to Thorpe Park! I've been living in the South for 5 years now and all through Uni we kept saying we were going to go but never did. I'm so glad I can finally say I've been! Although the setting isn't quite as pretty as Alton Towers with all the gardens, there are still some nice lakes and pretty flowers at Thorpe Park.

Token Geographer with the map

The lack of gardens means that the park is much more compact and you can easily walk from one side to the other in 10 mins, none of this cable car business you get at Alton Towers. And the rollercoasters were amazing!

First ride of the day to ease ourselves in...

Nemesis Inferno (Plus a random photo bomber)

At the start of the rapids while we were still dry

The new rollercoaster Swarm is set to look like an apocalypse was happening. Flying through smashed up billboards and past derelict emergency services vans definitely added a different sense of thrill. It was really good. We had the option of going round backwards but chickened out!

Winner of the day was Saw, I based this on the amount I screamed and feared for my life. It has a vertical climb and and the drop goes past 90 degrees (over-vertical??), plus another 3 massive drops on top of that. Terrifying.

Countdown to the start of the Saw rollercoaster

The vertical climb and over-vertical drop on Saw

A close second was the good old fashioned tea-cups. They'll always be great!

By the time we all got home we were cream-crackered. We finished the day with a film and then straight to bed ready for work again :(

Hope you had a good weekend,


Victoria





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