must have a word with the cleaner

It would be fair to say that I probably won't be working at my desk for a while. My entire workspace has been demolished after last night's freak hail storm that hit most of central Canberra. The picture doesn't really do it justice. The entire area was flooded last night, along with most of my floor, including our labs. Everything on my desk was saturated through (including the computer, which I suspect is nothing more than a box on a desk now). If you're wondering what all the white stuff on the ground is, that's the sun roof, which apparently didn't cope so well with golf ball sized hail stones.

While this might all look and seem a bit like the worst case scenario for a PhD student, thankfully almost everything of value to me was taken home last night. I have my laptop, my fancy camera, and most of the hardware I use with me here at home. Quite amazingly, in what can only be described as the greatest decision of my PhD, I decided last night that I would work at home today, and so took all the equipment I needed with me. A truly inspired decision after seeing my desk this morning.

Of course, it's not just my building that was trashed. The entire ANU campus is officially closed today, which gives you some indication of just haw hard the campus was hit. Certainly by the looks of things though, my building (RSISE) was among the worst hit.

When I get a chance, I will try and include some more pictures. It really was quite an amazing sight this morning. Hail stones piled up like snow all around campus.