Melbourne Invasion

Well, its been a week since my last post, which, as per usual, is mostly the result of having to exist in the PhD world, and therefore having to every now and then, deal with things like deadlines. The last week has been one of the busiest since arriving in Canberra. No less than 7 Melburnians have visited Canberra in the last week, four of which stayed at Rancho-relaxo-de-Belco (Aff and my place). What is even more impressive is that this was not even one big group, but rather, several independent groups, all converging on our nations capital at once. I wouldn't be surprised if ASIO suspected some sort of imminent attack was being planned as non-Canberrans converged on Belconnen (and Aff did buy some fertilizer a week or two before).

The terror cells included:

• Michael and Lisa (Mike is actually staying with us for a month while on placement at Canberra hospital as a trainee Genetic counselor. Lisa came up to visit for the weekend, and no doubt to make sure Michael wasn't getting too cozy in Canberra.
  
  
• Rob and Russ: Rob was up to watch the women's hockey, and Russ, as far as I have gathered, was hear to make caramel slice for us all, and his world famous sausage rolls. After initially being horrified by the news that Aff and I do not have wireless internet, they both seemed to settle into more off-line activities like sight seeing, and attending sports events.
  
  
• Tim: originally a Canberran native, then a Melburnian, but like so many before him, is now trapped in some sort of dilusional belief that London is the place to be. I've been to London in the winter .. I'm yet to be convinced (though 20 pound flights to Italy do have a certain appeal).
  
  
• Shelley and Ben: my sister and her hubby .. Up for a family event (on Ben's side), and bringing with them the obligatory family gossip (which is plentiful at the moment given my other sister Lindy is about to get married, and has just realised her wedding dress is not the one she ordered!)
  

I have to say, as it slowly dawned on me in the weeks leading up to this, that everyone was coming at once, and at a time when many other activities were scheduled (such as PARSA's xmas party), and when I had an important deadline to meet (I finally got the crazy camera to work with my program code, and is now being demo'd at a conference in Sydney), I was pretty anxious about how I'd cope .. but as it turned out, everything was great.

Rather than write one huge post about all that has happened, I think I will apply the "small bight size nuggets of news" strategy, which apparently means you are all more likely to read it (apparently more than two paragraphs is a challenge). With no immediate deadlines, and a supervisor, and a partner, both away at conferences this week, you can be very sure that blog posts from me will be coming thick and fast this week ... It keeps me off the streets at least.