Eudoxia goes swimming!

Friends, a new stage of my life is dawning. Okay, that’s over-dramatic, but something happened this week that I genuinely think will have a significant impact on my life from now on:

I got prescription goggles!

It’s really hard to take good photos when your arm is shaking because you’ve just been swimming and you’ve used muscles you haven’t used in months … plus you’re in a changing cubicle and suddenly aware that in this context the camera-shutter noise your phone makes sounds kind of creepy.

I like swimming. Getting into the pool takes me back to being … ooh, what age … about 10? Having school swimming lessons, feeling competent in the water, and having a little bit of time to mess about in the pool with my friends afterwards pretending to be dolphins and mermaids. There are photos of me in the water going back to when I was rather small (Mum, if you’re reading this, when do you think I was first in a swimming pool?) – not that I was ever a champion swimmer or anything like that, but so far as I can remember I’ve always been able to swim. Or rather, I have memories of classes learning to swim, but I can’t remember not being able to swim.

Swimming is also excellent exercise. You get the resistance of the water, it’s good for your posture, it’s low impact so won’t stress your joints out … there are lots of reasons to go swimming. Especially if it’s a form of exercise you feel particularly comfortable with.

But for years I’ve avoided going, because once I take my glasses off I feel vulnerable and anxious. I can get into the water and swim, but I can’t read signs, I can’t recognise people, I’m not confident of my depth perception … it becomes easier to just not go.

However, there’s an obvious solution to this: prescription goggles. And last weekend, I finally ordered some! From http://www.prescription-swimming-goggles.co.uk/ - the ones I ordered (“Swimmi”) can be found here.

They cost me £28 (plus £3.50 for post and packing). I put in my order over the weekend, they were dispatched on Monday and arrived on Tuesday. I chose these goggles because they had good reviews, you could adjust the fit easily (there are 3 sizes of nosepiece to choose from, as well as the straps being very adjustable), and – crucially – they let you specify a different prescription for each eye.

I had to do a bit of self-assembly (or rather, I started to slot the nosepiece together and then C took hold of it and sorted out the straps before I had a chance!) – you get individual lens-bits, a set of 3 nosepieces in varying sizes, two rubbery straps, and the screw-top case. And some helpful instructions so you know how everything is supposed to go together:

Good instructions, although they feature a rather unfortunate shade of orange on the eyepieces … I’m rather glad mine are blue!

I wore them to the pool for the first time on Wednesday evening. It was so good to be able to see everything properly – for the first time since I can remember, really. Once I’d adjusted the fit, the goggles fit well and generally stayed clear and didn’t leak – though I’ll admit they did leak when I was doing forward rolls underwater, but I suspect I scrunch up my face when I do that so it probably isn’t their fault.

Obviously I can’t yet say how they hold up over time, but I’m hopeful from reading other reviews that they’ll continue to perform well despite frequent use*, I’ll continue to enjoy swimming, and I’ll get significantly fitter. Here’s to the future! And how wonderful that I have discovered these now, rather than in 10 years’ time!**.

If you’re a short-sighted person in a similar position to me, and £30 isn’t a huge amount of money to you, I really would recommend trying them.

*I paid for 12 swims for the price of 10, so I have to go back to the pool at least another 11 times …
**this is my rationalist response to the urge to say “why didn’t I discover these years ago?”

The jobhunt is over :)

Just wanted – since I’ve mentioned the fact that I’ve been jobhunting a few times on here – to let you all know that I have a job to go to in September! Accepted an offer on Friday I’m going to be a programmer! C and I are going to be moving out together, to a new city! It’s all very exciting. You can probably tell. Hurray!

Boom-de-yada …

Some friends of mine are getting married this weekend and because They Are Awesome, we will be singing the “I love xkcd” song at their wedding:

This is apparently a spoof of/inspired by a Discovery Channel ad. So I looked up the ad, and this is actually pretty awesome, too:

The world is a pretty cool place. And I like these lines from the xkcd version:

I love the whole world
The future’s pretty cool
(boom de yada, boom de yada
boom de yada, boom de yada …)

(The future, indeed, is pretty cool. Hoping to have exciting news to share with you on the jobhunting front soon …)

Interview day, and xkcd (life update)

Have you seen Monday’s xkcd, Every Major’s Terrible? I like it a lot especially as I really like the Modern Major General song anyway. I quite like today’s xkcd too, about not making fun of people because they haven’t heard of stuff. It’s nice to explain new cool stuff to people (and have it explained to you!) rather than being faux-blase about everything and pretending you know it all already …

I had the interview day I referred to in the previous post today. It was interesting; I think I got all of the information I wanted from them, and I hope they got all of the information they wanted from me. Now we see what happens … I’m supposed to hear in about a week, either way.

Today – after getting back home after the interview – I started reading Dragonheart by Todd McCaffrey. It’s been a long time since I read a Pern book. So far it seems pretty much like the others – i.e. pretty formulaic, with some kind of interesting characters, but nobody in any great depth … I’m enjoying it though. Undemanding reading. I’m about 1/3 of the way through.

Apart from interviewing and reading xkcd I’ve mostly just been working a lot … and dancing this past weekend we had a weekend of practice so that was really good, although a lot of people were pretty tired I think. Still, it was nice to catch up with people. I need to get back to working on my thesis though … that will have to wait til Saturday.

I’m running out of Earl Grey! I’ve been trying to get my way through various stocks of tea, but Earl Grey is my favourite and I don’t want to run out of that … having enjoyed Twinings New Zealand Breakfast blend tea, I’m kind of tempted by Char’s Smokey Earl Grey as I think that might be quite similar. I’ll let you know if I try it.

I’m also coming down with a cold … any advice on how to get rid of it?

Working hard … and knitting

So I’ve been up to quite a lot since I posted last, with not much time (or inspiration) for posting on here … until today .

I’ve been doing an awful lot of transcribing, for work, which is hard and boring and sometimes a bit of an emotional wringer, which I hadn’t really expected. Either listening back to your own inept questioning (although my questioning is a lot more ept than it was once upon a time), or listening back to your interviewee struggling to express themselves. It’s hard, because you, as a researcher, want them to think really hard and say what they mean as clearly as they possibly can and in as much detail as they can … which means sometimes leaving them hanging and struggling when you, as a social human being, would like to jump in and say “oh, yes, I know what you mean, sure” and move on to an easier question.

I made stewed rhubarb and apple with ginger and vanilla yesterday. It was delicious.

I’ve also been applying for jobs – one application I sent in about 10 days ago and heard back on Friday and I’ve been invited to an interview day so that’s really encouraging – it’s always good to hear back about things! The other application I only sent in on Friday, so I’m hoping that I might hear back from them next week.

Putting that last application together was much more agonising than I thought it would be. I thought it would be relatively easy, since I’ve now got sort of half a dozen recent CVs, so I can edit bits from those together for new applications rather than starting from scratch. And that did make it easier than it otherwise would have been, but still an awful lot of work tailoring it to the company and to the position before I was happy with it. Something about my CV and cover letter writing must be working, though, because although I haven’t applied for very many jobs, for all the applications I’ve really put effort into I’ve made it through at least past the first stage (and of course, this is also partly why I haven’t applied for very many jobs – if I’m spending time preparing for the next round for one vacancy, I’m not spending that time applying to new ones!). If everything works out really well, I might soon have a job sorted for September, which would be fantastic. (Wish me luck!)

I (finally) finished all of the transcribing yesterday at 5pm … and later thay evening picked up some knitting again. I’m working on a big blanket made of acrylicy stuff (using up yarn that my MIL once intended for another project, now defunct, plus some that I bought to practice crocheting with and then gave up on) and I’m doing a few squares with entrelac. Entrelac is amazing, it’s magic – it looks like you’ve woven a load of knitting together. I’m using the instructions from the Danica scarf featured in Knitty, I’ll put some photos up when I’ve done more.

What have you been up to in the last few weeks?

it’s not all made in China :)

Successful shopping trip today – bought several fairly ordinary things, all made in the UK (tights, £3.50 for 2, M&S; non-twee anniversary card, £1.50, M&S; Fairtrade lavender-flavoured dark chocolate, £1.99, Holland & Barrett). And it didn’t take much effort – just making sure to turn things over and read the labels (e.g. various ranges of M&S tights are made in the UK, China, Turkey and Italy, so I just needed to check that I was getting some made in the UK).

(In my book, interestingly-flavoured fairtrade chocolate counts as an ordinary thing – as in, it’s somethng I’d like to buy quite often!)

I’m particularly pleased to have found tights made in the UK. This means that between ethically-produced clothing (from places like People Tree and One World is Enough) and clothing produced in the UK (where I live), I can now source nearly every category of clothing I would want to buy in future*. Of course, it’ll be a long time before my wardrobe is entirely made up of things from these sources, because it’s hardly eco-friendly (or wallet-friendly) to throw out clothes I already own, but it’s really nice to find more and more options for buying clothing that definitely isn’t made in sweatshops.

(*the ones I haven’t noticed a source for yet are bras and swimwear. Anyone have any recommendations?)

The Thinkers – the Monkees meets Ancient Greek Philosophy …

Lovely sister shared this on Facebook – I think it’s pretty awesome. Horrible Histories is a great series.

Learning Chinese!

(tl;dr summary: memrise.com is pretty cool for learning foreign language vocabulary)

One of my medium-term aims is to learn Mandarin to a reasonable conversational standard. I think it’s a really neat language, and at the moment I can’t speak any languages other than English which is something I’d like to rectify. I went to Chinese School on Saturdays when I was quite young, and I wasn’t very into it (as I recall, my attitude was “… school? On a Saturday?”) I think that helped with my ability to hear and distinguish tones and sounds found in Mandarin. Also, I remember growing up listening to my Mum talking to some of her friends in other Asian languages – although I didn’t understand a word of it, I was exposed to a lot of non-English syllables and sounds, which can only have helped.

In New Zealand, I studied Mandarin in Year 9 and 10. But when I moved to the UK in Year 11, (unsurprisingly) the school I went to didn’t offer Mandarin as a language option, so everything pretty much stopped there. I’ve always intended to pick it up again, and have done the odd little bit here and there, but I really can’t say anything very useful. I’m at that stage where I can say a few simple things, but have such a small vocabulary that I wouldn’t really be able to have a conversation about anything.

So a couple of days ago when I read about memrise.com in Wired magazine, and how it aims to use mnemonics and brain science to help you learn foreign language vocabulary, it sounded pretty awesome. (Learning informed by brain science? One of my favourite things!) I’ve signed up and so far, I think it’s pretty cool.

You can choose your course – some content is user-generated, and I guess that will gradually become a bigger part of the site, but the stuff I’ve been looking at has been generated by the team. You “plant” words (i.e. get introduced to them), “water” them (revise – in a variety of ways, clicking boxes, typing out the English meaning), and “Harvest” them. I expect there are things to do with retaining them in long term memory too but I haven’t been using it for long enough to get there yet.

It’s really cool, and I’m really pleased to have found a way to try and improve my Chinese and increase my vocabulary. One of the best things, in my opinion, is that many words are recorded by several voices – so you get a chance to hear what the word sounds like at different pitches, which I think is really useful. Another thing I really like is that it does talk about the construction of characters in terms of their parts making sense (or not making sense … tree + sheep = appearance. Hm. Well, it helps to remember the character – “The sheep hides behind the tree because it doesn’t like its appearance!”) and there are visuals to help associate the character with the meaning – like this animation of the character for “eye”.

Sometimes the site seems really slow to load, which can be a bit frustrating – though once a session starts, I don’t seem to have problems. But apart from that, everything is pretty awesome. I’m really happy to have found this – and it’s so cool that it’s free, and that users can add content and upvote/downvote content. Plus, it will help me realise another long-held minor ambition: to learn enough French to be able to transliterate French words! (One day I’d like to be able to speak French. Long before that, I’d like to be able to confidently read French place names / cookery terms / etc properly, without having had to hear them beforehand).

Which languages do you speak? Which languages do you wish you could speak?

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

(Also, I get to start eating lunch every day again! And lots of people get to have lots of chocolate! I do hope, of course, that it’s fairly traded …)

(if you're looking for Jesus ... he's not in the nest. We suggest trying the garden)

Whether you celebrate Easter or not, I hope your day is filled with peace, happiness* and joy.

*Also, I recommend making chocolate cornflake nests like the one above – I made them for the first time yesterday and it was easy and they taste fab . The recipe I used had 225g milk chocolate, 50g butter, 30g/2T golden syrup, and 100g cornflakes.

in praise of the UL

Hello again. Oh boy. I would say “where does the time go?” but I know the answer to that really … into looking for jobs and planning to mess about with python and tracking down journal articles. I am tired today – more physically than mentally (for once!). Mostly because I spent a lot of yesterday traipsing around Cambridge with very heavy library books.

But! Yesterday also reminded me of something:

The University Library is a Seriously Awesome Place.

UL South Wing, Floor 6, Overflow stacks and shelves. Look at all the knowledge ...

When I was an undergraduate, I never used the UL. I never needed to – everything I wanted was either in my College library or the Moore library (which holds the UL’s working collections in maths/physics/astro/engineering/etc). Truth be told, I was a little intimidated by the UL. I always meant to sign up for one of their “introduction to the library” tours but never managed it … I don’t think I ever went in there as an undergrad. But now that I’m a postgrad/staff, and looking up lots more things in journals, I’ve been in a few times.

I still don’t know my way around, really, and I don’t quite feel at home there yet, but wow. Just wow. I mean, libraries in generally are pretty awesome – both as a concept and in practice (although of course some are more awesome than others) – but the UL is something else.

The atmosphere of quiet studying! The desks! The clever use of windows to make the most of natural light! The realisation that you pretty much need a torch if you want to look at the middle of the stacks! The labyrinthine twists and turns … the ancient lift(s?) … the helpful people on the front desk … the sensible and convenient locker room … and, of course, the extensive journal availability.

I spent 3 hours there (mostly looking through the International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, if you’re interested). It was a pleasure.

Do you have a favourite library?