Tim Got Married!!!!!

On a wonderful Saturday a few weeks ago my good friend Timmy married Miriam. This particular wedding was super exciting as all the Circus freaks from around Australia came together to celebrate. Unfortunately Chris couldn't make it over from the States, but we found ways to compensate.

When the circus is in town weird shit happens - witness the antiphoto. Although not planned everyone has somehow managed to look unphotogenic. Even the groom is wearin an expression usually associated with sociopaths

Its turns out the best remedy is to focuse on another.

The ceremony was held in in Sutton and the sun found time in its busy schedule to make an appearance, which for 2010 is pretty amazing. Tim strode down from the pub accompanied by his Best Man, father and a marching bagpipe player.

Tim marching down the road to the melodious belch of the bagpipes.

Not to be outdone, Miriam joined the grinning groom to a blood pumping drum beat.

The vows

Soon after the guests could be found knocking back a few drinks to combat the heat, and it wasn't long until everyone retired inside. We drank, we ate, we danced and we were merry.

Dancing and merriness

The next day we all met up again for a BBQ. Once again the circus crew got together made plans for out next adventure, lamenting over the missing member - when, from over the horizan, Chris peddles up in true Lauf fashion.

This is another example of weird shit happening when we get together

Upon closer inspection Chris hadn't actually travelled halfway across the world in less than 12 hours to make an amazing entrance, but it was an almighty coincidence.

Spot the difference!

RSC Christmas Party

On Thursday afternoon the Research School of Chemistry celebrated Christmas by getting the majority of staff and research students hopelessly drunk.

Chemists drinking beer - its so cliche

It was strange not having Pinko and Jen around to join in on the festivities but I still managed to enjoy myself. Much of the afternoon was spent lamenting the state of the Aussie cricket with Pat and Mikey from the Humphrey group and playing soccer on the stupendously slippery grass.

Torsten, Mikey, and Pat - the 'Humphries'

For a while I refused to run because I didn;t want to break into a sweat, but near the end it was just myself and Titou against the rest so I stepped up a gear and we ripped apart the opposition with our sheer brilliance. We both spent a lot of time in the mud.

Most of the ground was covered in puddles, and a good tactic was to kick lots of water at the defender and then run around them as they laughed at their predicament

Afterwards I challenged Tom to a game of chess. At first we started sledging each other but soon it became serious. At one stage I was two moves from a brilliant checkmate but Tom smelled something fishy and played some radical moves. Unfortunatly soon afetr the demise of my queen to a sneaky Knight spelled disaster for my army and I was resoundly beaten.

Tom, the drunken Chess master

A few of us ventured to the uni pub for dinner and to bitch and moan about undergrads students. After this Jeremy, Ian and I took to the pool tables, defeating whosoever dared to play us.

Steve and Adam - Adam's sparkley beard was blindingly delightful

From here we parted ways and I headed to the only payphones in town to call a friend of mine, Alex Haller, who was in Canberra for a conference. Despite my best efforts I couldn't get a hold of him, and then low and behold as I walked past O'Malley's there he was on his phone trying to call me back. We shared many a merry pint (and a jug) with each other, Luke Broadhurst (an ex-ressie of Fenner), and some other scientists in town for the conference too.

Myself, Alex and Luke - reunited at last

All the Guiness I had lubricated my sense of humour to just the right level until one of the girls asked if I was a comedian. I explained I also was a research scientist but that I also had a part time job, to which she immediately responded 'as a comdeian?'(bless her soul).

Lamenting the fact the Alex's is begger than mine

Unfortunately this put a lot of pressure on me to be more funny so I stopped talking for at least 5 minutes. The night ended with Alex and I promising to ride our motorcycles across Australia at some point next year.

My early attempts at being artistic

A night out on the grog

It's not very often I go out on a Thursday night, but at this time my research required me to keep weird hours and I had to be up at 2:00am. There were two ways I could keep myself occupied: twiddling my thumbs or smashing cocktails and beer. I opted for the latter.

The latter option also allowed me to make phallic symbols in public places

Grimesy, Joe, Dan, Satomi, Beachley, Bec, and Michelle joined me in this expedition and we traipsed down to Kremlin where we met Clarkey and Su Lin.

When good undergrads turn bad

After spending bucketloads of cash we sauntered over to Mesh and bumbed into Mr Liu. We busted a groove for a while, attempted to steal some grog, and made witty banter.

No one was more surprised than us to find that this unmanned bar grog fridge was locked.

Afterwards we retired to the Cigar lounge of O'Malleys.

Joe poses for all the ladies, unfurtunately none wanted to draw him naked.

By this stage it was coming onto two O'clock so Bec and I returned to Fenner and I actually completed the work I had to do.

No one notices as Dan has a fit on the dancefloor

A sneaky day off

I took a sneaky (not so sneaky now its published) day off uni with Michelle to celebrate the completion of a conference poster and reveiw article I wrote.

A Michelle in Canberra

Michelle and I enjoyed a beer in the Uni House beer garden before meandering into town to enjoy more beers/cider and watch the cricket at the Canberra Club and the Australian.

We ran into Tristan in town. It was very exciting.

Slightly tipsy we returned home just in time to receive and accept an invitation to go to Broad Burger - a caravan by the lake that sells burgers.

Swans get angry when you take photos of them (also when you through rocks at their babies)

You can thank me later for this!

Good ideas, Great times!

First you need some variety of tinned drink. Most of us chose beer, although there was a couple of ruskis and the DW brought along soft drink.

in a bold move we also supplied nibbles to help us poor wrokers through the tough times

Step two is helmets (pictured). We chose fire helmets because they:

a) are brightly coloured,

b) protect your head in case of an accidental tumble, and

c) are inherently awesome.

A box of helmets was conveniently found in my room

Third, stubby holders for holdin aforementioned cans of drink, and fourthly straws and packing tape.

The mouth of a happy man is filled with beer - ancient egyption proverb circa 2000 BC

Highly recommended are friends and engineering degrees.

This is a two in one package - a friend who moonlights as an engineer

Decorations can also be added to give your helmet individual flair as proudly shown by Matt

There were some issues in stopping the flow once started. This made it somewhat difficult for the Duty Warden to effectively answer emergency phone calls.

Georgia fields a phone call about missing fire helmets

No people were harmed in the making of these phenonmenal and fashioable headwear.

Planning is also not essential

Are the Bombers doomed again?

Essendon have named their new coach - James Hird. While I respect the bloke as a player and he is super knowledgeable about the game I do wonder why Bombers have appointed an inexperienced senior coach for the second consecutive time. Especially given Hird has had extremely limited coaching experience. There is talk of hiring a ex-senior coach for an assistants position (Bomber Thompson's name has been bandied around), but will that be enough to mentor the new coach to his role?

The races

Andrew 'Goofy' Bryen enjoyed the distinct pleasure of turning 30 recently and we celebrated in spectacular fashion.

Six Canberra kids.

I'm not sure whose idea it was, but it was a work of brilliance - seven friends from Canberra and one from Sydney traveled the dusty roads to West Wyalong so we could attend the world renown Caragabal Sheep Races (which involved slightly further traveling on slightly dustier roads).

The event was nothing short of amazing, there was a jumping castle, there was a merry-go-round, there were SHEEP, and sheep being chased by kids. We placed bets, we drank beer, and we bought a sheep for the finals (I think it came in last).

Sheep are funny races - they run about half the track and then stop dead.

Yep, this is halfway through the race.
If your sheep wasn't winning you could scare them to a standstill and hopr for a change of fortune

They look around trying to figure out what is going on around them, and the kids scare them into finishing the race. They also jump a lot. Oh yeah, kids are released to scare the sheep back into movement. After the races we retired back to the 'Goof' residence for an bountiful feast that involved pig, sheep, cow, various salads, bread and more. This was followed by a plethora of desserts including multiple cakes, fruit salad, chocolate, toffee, and other sweet things I cannot name.As usual Goofy, Peachy, and I found the pub and we played Buck Hunter. It turns out I am not the 'Great White Hunter' I was hoping.

The sheep cake made by Amanda! Somewhat amazing.

Until next year Caragabal, we will miss you.

The first of many

Its that stage of life, my friends are starting families while I'm still bumming around at uni.

The first of many to come arrived about six weeks ago!

Aren't those gloves adorable - they stop him from clawing his eyes out!

Welcome to the Sprightly Dugong Owen - you can now join the special few under 1yos that make it to this exclusive website. Owen is the son of Simon and Brooke, from all accounts he has ten fingers and toes - which is about as much information most males need about kids (I assume he was weighed and stuff but that all means nothing to me). Like most people his age Owen's hobbies include sleeping, pooping, and eating. I am yet to here him give a full throated yell, but there will be time for that later.

Adelaide Zoo

Whilst in Adelaide I decided to visit the zoo and see what amazing specimans of animals that are not human were on offer. There were some exciting, and not so exciting times...

Don't be fooled, this was an exciting. The giant turtle may look and move like the rock behind it, but they do live up to their title

All in all it was a bit depressing see how small some of the enclosures were. Larger animals like the lion and giraffes did not have too much space.

These guys were hilarious, at least they had space to monkey around

(not quite as subtle as my inception pun)

A few of the exciting animals are also very lazy and spent too much time sleeping. The so called 'dangerous' animals failed to strike terror, fear, or even anxiety in me. Once again John Cleese has lied to me through comedy.

At least this bloke was awake - the poison arrow frogs (circled) are dangerous in the same way

that playing with fire whilst coated in petrol is dangerous -don't touch.

There some exciting times - I came across my favourite frog (I've never seen one before) and I also saw a snake in the middle of meal (actually I could see the meal in the middle of the snake)

Holy shit, this snake is eating a mouse!

Yeah, this snake was the coolest thing I saw. I watched it for about ten minutes until I too started to get hungry.

Unlike certain animated films lemurs do not dance and sing,

and throwing coins at them just made them agitated...

The zoo had a huge number of animals, but the small cages dampened my excitement a little. The wildlife park was much better, but I do not think many patrons would attend a zoo in which you roamed with the animals. I've read way too much about the ambushing tactics of lions to trust a sleeping one.

I'm also sure meerkats would hunt in packs, sneaky bastards.

ICCC39 - When too much chemistry is not enough.

At the end of July I attended my first chemistry conference. It was in Adelaide and Chemists from all over the world dropped by to introduce the latest research the international academic community. For those of you who have never been to a conference before, the day is filled with talks of approx 20 mins each outlining cutting edge research.

Cutting edge chemical research

The attendees who are not speaking are invited to supply an A0 poster portraying how they are making the world a better place through chemistry. Some of the world's preeminent scientist also give quite exciting hour long talks at the begininning of each day. All in all the day is very exciting for those who enjoy academia.

At the beach in Adelaide with fellow Phd chemists Karl (New Zealand) and Rashmi (Melbourne)

The nights, however, a very exciting for those who enjoy a tipple or two of water is on hand. Networking I think they call it...

Dan 'networking' with a pig. I bet this never happens in Adelaide

I met some awesome people from all around the world, but mostly I spent time with the Kiwis, Germans, and Polish contingent. However I did immensely enjoy confusing the Japanese by speaking to them in their own language.

Highlights include the following:

• I had heard about Adelaides giant balls, but they had to be seen to be believed

Liam (Engalnd) and I emasculated by giant steel balls

• I also visited the zoo and lions and tigers and bears (pandas!) oh my. I also saw a snake feeding

A real live panda bear that is not sleeping(apparently they sleep a lot)!

• On the last day Tom (polish) and I went to the wildlife park. Due to the copious amount of alchol consumed on the previous night we missed the bus we had to catch to get there so we walked up a narrow windy road for about 7 kms to get the park (quite dangerous). The animals were all aussie natives. We unexpectedly ran into another groups of chemists who were not aussie nativesand I felt superior by knowing more than the others around me about the fauna. As I had to catch a plane that arvo, Tom and I walked back down, but this time through the national park using my awesome watch/wristtop computer to guide us back.

There are some Germans patting the Dingos, they did this for about 15 minutes

• At the beginning of the trip involved sitting with the Kiwis playing cards and drinking beer just 5 minutes after I had met them. My watch's weather alarm starting going crazy and I mumbled off hand there was a storm coming. A quick glance outside showed a bright sunny day. Later that we exited the pub into a downpour. Everyone was very impressed!

Mike, Scott, Dan and Matt are are about to be very impressed


• Five of us Aussies sneaking off the a pub on one night, followed by a small contingent of kiwis. People sent messages to friends and supervisors, and than wave after wave of chemits appeared at this quant little pub. The owner was so stoked he stayed open for us every night just waiting for us to come back. And go back we did.
• The Dog and Duck (or was it the Duck and Dog). For one night we owned this place
  
• An aussie meat stone grill. A stupendously hot piece of rock is brought out and a plate with uncooked meat. You put the meat on the grill and cook it. AWESOME
  

Raw awesomeness - about to be cooked

Thanks all for the good times and great memories.

Oh what a trip!