Michael West’s Blog

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.

I went and saw Transformers at the cinema last night with some work friends and my house mates. It was awesome! One of the best action movies I have seen. The special effects were amazing and very smoothly integrated and there were heaps of explosions and cool car and aircraft chases. Rating - 5/5.

OK, so this blog isn’t intended to be solely about Canberra’s weather but it has been pretty interesting lately. We have had a lot of rain here in the past few days and as such Lake Burley Griffin is now full - mainly due to stormwater and other runoff from North Canberra. As such for the first time in 5 years there is talk of opening the floodgates on Scrivener Dam. At present 3 of the sluices are open and allowing flow into the Molonglo River. Word from Christina, who works for SunWater - they have responsiblity for Scrivener Dam - is that the people there are working around the clock monitoring the water levels in the lake and it seems that extra people will be sent to Canberra from the Brisbane office (where she is) to help out. Sadly, Christina is in a different division so won’t get to come down. Above is a photograph I took last night and below are some photos I took this morning on the way to work.

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!”

CNN reports this mildly bizzare episode in Palatine, Illinois….
“An elementary school science teacher in this Chicago suburb doesn’t have to turn on the news for an update on NASA’s space mission. She just turns on her video baby monitor.

Since Sunday, one of the two channels on Natalie Meilinger’s baby monitor has been picking up black-and-white video from inside the space shuttle Atlantis. The other still lets her keep an eye on her baby.

“Whoever has a baby monitor knows what you’ll usually see,” Meilinger said. “No one would ever expect this.”

Live video of the mission is available on NASA’s Web site, so it’s possible the monitor is picking up a signal from somewhere.

“It’s not coming straight from the shuttle,” NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean said. “People here think this is very interesting and you don’t hear of it often — if at all.”

Meilinger silenced disbelieving co-workers by bringing in a video of the monitor to show her class on Tuesday, her students’ last day of school. At home, 3-month-old Jack and 2-year-old Rachel don’t quite understand what their parents are watching.

“I’ve been addicted to it and keep waiting to see what’s next,” Meilinger said.

Summer Infant, the monitor’s manufacturer, is investigating what could be causing the transmission, communications director Cindy Barlow said. She said she’s never heard of anything similar happening.

“Not even close,” she said. “Gotta love technology.”

Yes, that’s right! South eastern NSW has been hit by a big low and so its been very cold here in Canberra. It was -5 deg C the other night at my house and the Bureau of Meteorology warned that the airmass over Canberra was cold enough that if it rain it was likely to fall as snow at higher elevations. Well in the early hours of the morning today it did! OK, so it hasn’t snowed in Canberra proper but it did to the north east at Bungendore and Queanbeyan. The ABC reports falls of up to 6 inches in some places and has some nice photos on its website here. The weather has resulted in traffice chaos, a rarity in Canberra, while the rest of us are just left with grey skies, rain and ice cold winds!