July 5 - It’s funny the things you type when your hands aren’t properly lined up on the keys…Also, literally the second I started typing this it began absolutely POURING outside my window. I can barely hear my music over the rain on the roof outside (even though there are 7 floors and I’m on 2, I guess part of the building is just 1 floor so there is a roof right outside my window).
Anyway, no work today! All the kiddies in the lab took me to Cockatoo Island, which is an old industrial area that’s been turned into a (sort of) park. It’s a pretty neat place, and they had some installation art that was on display. Some of it was really bizarre, but some was pretty neat. Here is a sampling…
As you can see, some really neat (and some totally bizarre) stuff! I think our most common phrase while walking around was, “is this part of the art?” One “exhibit” was literally a pile of driftwood and random garbage fished out of the bay all piled up with a tree growing out of the middle. There was another one which feature about a dozen rocks that were mounted on wooden posts with random letter strings written on the post. Sometimes I just don’t understand art.
Anyway, even without the art it would be a neat place to visit - kind of a cool experience to walk around and in all the old industrial buildings.
Overall fun day! Certainly better than doing real work, although we did briefly go back to the lab after our adventure (I did not accomplish anything, although I collected another data set thanks to other people being more motivated than me!)
After a brief break, I went rock climbing with one of the guys in the lab. It was…moderately successful! My first two attempts I was able to make it to the top of relatively easy courses. Trying anything harder was a complete failure - one course I couldn’t even do the beginning at all, so I never made it off the ground! I was eventually able to make it up a third course later, though it took pretty much all my remaining strength. It really is much much harder than it looks, especially for someone with pretty much zero upper body strength. But definitely a good workout, my arms are still completely dead! I also never realized that the hand/footholds are colored by course (i.e. you’re supposed to only use the red ones, or only green, or whatever you choose). It makes much more sense this way! I always wondered what was so hard about it, because it looks like there are holds everywhere! But yeah, you “can’t” use them all (obviously I cheated a bunch of times because I was horrible, but if you’re actually good I guess you wouldn’t).
All right well, that was my day. Tomorrow, back to the grind! But only for a day, though I still have to plan an adventure for the weekend…
