Michael West’s Blog

Christina and I have now returned from our honeymoon, are settling into married life and have returned to work. We had a fantastic and relaxing time away and I will put some photos up here soon. We have also recieved a few photos from our families that were taken at the wedding and I’ll put them up as well. If anyone took photos at the ceremony or reception, we’d be most grateful if you could email them to me. It will be a month or two till we get the photos from the official photographer and we’d love to see different people’s perspective of the day as well.

Also, in other news, I have yielded to the pressure and joined Facebook! The main reason is because my brother Andrew is travelling the world for the next 10 months and is putting all his photos up there. It’s also been good to reconnect with people I haven’t been in touch with for ages as well. My profile is here if you wish to add me as a friend (I think you need to have signed up to Facebook to see my profile).

Yes, I am still alive! Unfortunately I haven’t spent the last 2 months on holidays in Cairns either, as James suggested here. Life has been very very busy. Since the IPELS2007 conference in Cairns some of the following has transpired…

• I’ve had a new housemate living with us for two months (his name is Denis and he is visiting from Germany)
• Spent a week in Sydney at the Australian Space Science Conference
• The soccer season has come to a close - we didn’t make the finals
• I scored the winning goal in the ANU Research Schools Final, the Purple Shin - more on that later
• Been flat out in the lab doing lots of different things
• My first journal paper got accepted for publication - yippee!!
• Went to JT & Annie’s wedding in Sydney
• Indulged my passion for gardening and started a vegetable garden at home, only to see it wither in the heat
• And numerous other things…

More details will be coming soon, but the two big things that are coming up are pretty exciting Christina will be arriving in Canberra permanently this Tuesday and I will be heading to the US for two weeks in November to attend a planetary exploration conference at NASA Ames. The other not so exciting thing in the horizon is my PhD Mid Term Review on 22nd November - eeekk!

On Sunday afternoon I headed to Canberra Stadium to see Sydney FC take on the Central Coast Mariners in the A-League Pre-Season Cup. It was a good game which the Mariners won 3-0. There is a good overview of the match on the Football in the Capital blog. There was also a reasonable turn out of some 5,700 people which isn’t bad given how bitterly cold it was. Here are some of the other photos I took…

The past 4 weeks have been pretty hectic and the last week has been just plain awful (more on that later). It probably best to start at the beginning. So far this month has consisted of …

• Christina and I had an engagement party in Sydney (which was great) and then another one in Canberra the next afternoon (which was also great). Photos are coming soon.
• The upgrades on the vacuum chamber for the HDLT were finally finished allowing me to reassemble everything (about 2 weeks of work) and attempt to get experiments underway. More on that in my next post.
• I had a French engineering student shadow me at work for a week. It was good to have the extra set of hands to help with things, but keeping him busy was draining.
• I’ve been off to the physio on average twice a week for treatment on my hand, which is improving so at last I can return to goalkeeping duties. My two games playing in defense were admirable but contained moments of madness including conceding a direct free kick for a tackle in the box. Fortunately our substitute keeper saved it (and my dignity).
• Canberra was forecast to get snow down to 500 metres (basically everywhere) and it didn’t. Such an anti-climax. All we got instead were a few nights at -6 deg C and a nice white blanket on the ranges.
• I traveled to Brisbane for Christina and my final engagement party. After some running around to organise things the day before it all went smoothly and was also good. I even made raspberry & white chocolate muffins from scratch (under Christina’s guidance)!! Photos coming soon as well.
• I’ve been staying up to watch the Socceroos woeful performance thus far in the Asian Cup. Thankfully they rediscovered playing professionally and beat Thailand to progress to a quarter-final showdown against Japan.
• Finally, I got the reviewer’s comments back on my first journal paper. Their comments were positive but much work is required to get all the changes they requested done.

The photo above is a of brushtail possum that was perched in one of the trees outside the Research School of Physical Sciences & Engineering where I work. The poor thing looked pretty cold and was happy to sleep there most of the day. Even the noise from the workshops didn’t trouble it.

OK, so I have some good news and some bad news…

GOOD NEWS: After a 3 week break due to a bad leg injury (see earlier post here for details) I was able to play soccer again for ANU FC Division 4 on Saturday. We played against the 2nd placed team, Woden Valley FC.

BAD NEWS: Just 10 minutes into the match, while goal keeping, I charged a player who was shooting about 8 yards out. His foot and the ball connected with my right hand and bent my three middle fingers back about 45 degrees.

GOOD NEWS: I stopped a certain goal.

BAD NEWS: I took no further part in the match and had to watch the rest of the game from the sideline with my hand wrapped in an icepack.

GOOD NEWS: My team played the best they had all season and went up 1-0. Sadly Woden Valley equalised with just 3 minutes to go. But it was still a good result.

BAD NEWS: After the match my fingers and hand started to swell and bruise rapidly. See photos below. Notice the rainbow coloured fingers and the size of my knuckles! After seeking the advice of a friend who is a nurse (thanks Anna), I headed to Canberra Hospital to see a doctor. I was quickly referred to get an x-ray.

GOOD NEWS: A only had to wait 10 minutes to get an x-ray, a minor miracle for the overstretched ACT health system. X-ray showed that nothing was broken.

BAD NEWS: Doctor concluded that I had hyper-extended my fingers and over stretched all the ligaments. The bruising and swelling will get worse before it gets better. Hence I can’t play sport for another few weeks and it could take a month or two for my fingers to heal completely. That means I will miss even more games!
GOOD NEWS: It has rained continually all day today and so my match on Wednesday night has been washed out (again!). Lets hope it keeps raining (we need the run off in our dams anyway).

Not that I’m complaining or anything - I like cold weather (except when I have soccer training of an evening) - but according to the Bureau of Meteorology forecast it is going to get down to -4 deg C tonigh in Canberra! Sadly, it won’t snow but we will get some cool frosts tomorrow. The ABC did report yesterday some snow on the Brindabellas - up to 10cm.

Last night I went to a talk by Malcolm Turnbull, the Federal Minister for the Environment & Water Resources, held by the Canberra Division of Engineers Australia. The talk was entitled “Vision and community expectations of engineers in relation to water, energy and environmental matters”. To be honest I was a little underwhelmed. It was obvious that Mr Turnbull is a very good orator and you would expect that from someone who was a very successful solicitor and businessman and now a politician - his bio is here. He was engaging and drew examples from a wide range of fields and epochs, including ancient Rome and the engineering endeavours of the Eqyptians. But for me the problem was the lack of content, he didn’t really talk about much that I (or the rest of the audience) weren’t aware of already. He basically just summarised the key environmental challenges facing Australia - water scarcity and climate change and stressed that engineers were crucial to tackling these problems. Sure… but in what way? What can we keep doing? What do we need to do better? What more does the community expect from us? Where are the skilled people and the other resources going to come from? I guess I was left with more questions, than insights into his view on the issues at hand.

To be fair, my attention was held completely for the 20-25 minutes that he spoke and he came across very measured and didn’t politicize the issues too much - which is unusual for a politician in an election year. Also, it was interesting to hear his views on how climate change should be addressed. Principally, he said the three main areas where real benefits can be made were…

1. Increased energy efficiency - whether in the home or industry, for example sustainable buildings, insultation, etc.
2. Forestry policy - interestingly reversing deforestation, in particular the destruction of rainforests in Brazil and Indonesia, can reduce CO2 emissions by up to 20%. Hence, the Federal Governments funding of forestry initatives in Indonesia recently.
3. Zero emission energy production - solar, nuclear, bio, wind, etc. Here Mr Turnbull harped on a bit about clean coal & CO2 sequestration which I think is a bit of a pipe dream and is touted so as not to put the coal industry offside etc.

Anyway, it was interesting hearing the Minister speak but it would have been nice if there was a bit more ‘meat’ to complement his well crafted words. I would be curious to hear what others think about the proposed three-pronged response to climate change outlined above.

Yesterday, a young woman, agitated after being accused of shoplifting and arguing with staff at Woolworths, decided to use her car to redecorate the front of the Erindale Shopping Centre. The Erindale Shops are just down the road from my house and within walking distance - and I found out about it by reading the news online here and here! Thankfully no one was injured in the incident and the woman was promptly arrested. Apparently there was a fair bit of damage to doors and signage and those stupid kids rides you find in such shopping centres - I’m not complaining about the destruction of the latter! Anyway… as one of my house mates pointed out aptly, “That’s the south side of Canberra for you!”

Yes winter is here and you definitely know it when you live in Canberra! On Tuesday night a big cold front came in from the west and brought some good rain (15+ mm) and 80km/hr gusts of wind. As a result the following night the temperature got down to -2.9 deg C in the early hours of the morning in Tuggeranong! It was bitterly cold and I was outdoors at soccer training as well when it was about 4 deg C. It was OK while running around but once I stopped to do some goalkeeping drills the ends of my fingers were numb. I was very grateful for the beanie I borrowed and will never forget mine again!