Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Nichola's LiveJournal:

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Monday, June 9th, 2008
7:57 pm	OK, so not quite the picture I promised... I've mostly been buried in work since my last post, as here they want a PhD progress report after 9 months. But I did get out yesterday with the Wildlife Trust to look at pretty flowers, and have been quite impressed with the new (well, for Christmas) camera. And now back to writing about genome-walking (basically PCR with extra gremlins). (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 9th, 2007
11:48 pm	Galapagos Diary! My diary is finally typed and uploaded. I've put it all on the relevant dates as it was too big to put in one or two big posts. I should warn you it is very long, but broken down day by day so can be read a little at a time. So there you go. Next job is photos, but not tonight. (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 27th, 2007
11:09 pm	Rothamsted! So, I've just got hold of some internets of my own (via wireless network in my hall- currently waiting on ICT to set me up, so our post-doc is logging me on with his account in the office which is fine for useful stuff but probably not great to make loads of non-work sites appear on his browsing history even if I would only be using them at lunchtime). anyhoo... I arrived last Sunday, after being brave with M25 (but not as brave as I'll have to be to go home, without Dad directing me round the big nasty junctions). Spent time mainly unpacking, shopping, fighting flat-pack shelving, etc, and exploring the immediate area a bit. St Albans is useful for stuff (Argos, Homebase, supermarkets, twon centre things), but Saturday is a bad day to go as the market simultaneously brings in loads more traffic and closes off half the high street to pedestrians and closes off an entire multi-storey carpark for market traders to park. Wheathampsted is a very pretty little village, with a nice big free car park where you can walk along the Lea Valley and a nice tea room back in the village for afterwards. Went back to London for Wednesday and Thursday nights to see John as he packed up everything from the flat to go to Cambridge for his masters. He went on friday, and seems to be enjoying Cambridge whilst taking all the pretention with a suitable snigger. Then back here for the weekend, when a few more people arrived and more of my exploring was done... and the Monday morning, my first day at School/Work/Thing. It's a nice walk across the common to get there, the place is shiney with lots of big new toys (mainly whizzy molecular biology machines that I noticed), the people are nice- heads down and get on with it during the day, followed by the pub to unwind and talk a bit afterwards- suits me just fine, far better than feeling I ought to be making conversation all day during work. By Tuesday, I was already in the lab, making agar plates (that evening I felt the need to make jelly for dinner- if a nasty pathogenic fungus gets given whatever flavour jelly it likes, i.e. malt extract/ mycological peptone/ v8 juice, then I should have whatever I like, i.e. green with tinned pineapple). Tomorrow I'll see how non-aseptic my technique was by how many evil-world-domination bacterial colonies have sprung up on my plates. Today I went to Reading to meet my supervisor- he seemed really nice too, we got on as well as needed, although I think I gave him a rather excessively evil glance when I said I was from the Isle of Sheppey and he said "Oh, well I don't know Essex all that well..." Also got my security card there, went to talks, got handbooks, got Freshers' Fair freebies (and didn't join Lock-Picking Soc...) then back here. Back to the lab tomorrow, hopefully to try to revive some fungus that's been in a -80 freezer since the last person working on it left. finally, as a taster before I type up my Galapagos diary, I'll throw in a picture. Current Mood: bouncy (Comment on this)
Friday, September 21st, 2007
7:41 pm	My latest long-overdue post OK, so the plan was, get back from Ecuador, start typing up the sharable parts of my diary, upload them to journal, then get on with journal as normal. This hasn't happened, and updates on everything since have been put off until that's done, so here's an interim update on more recent stuff. After being back for 1 1/2 weeks, I went to Scotland with John for one last attempt at his Crazy Plan. I was the supoprt vehicle but found time to see a few things, like wild red squirrels (currently my vote for Cutest Thing). This brought me up to last weekend, and since then I have been mostly packing as I'm off to Rothamsted (yay!) on Sunday. So yes, once there, with room, computer etc, I will upload a Galapagos diary and pictures, followed by a briefer Scotland diary and pictures. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 17th, 2007
11:46 pm	After a fitful sleep- lots of dreaming, waking and struggling to sleep again- I woke with a jump at 6:02 (what happened to the alarm?), threw on my clothes and went to my taxi. The airport was rather chaotic: when our flight appeared on the departure board, I ended up near the back of the check-in queue, where I waited for over an hour (initially it was moving at a fair pace, but then they dropped from 5 desks to 2 and it ground to a halt), by which time I had to run to the departure gate as the rickety old bus to take us over to the plane was waiting to go. Then, as we got to Miami, things didn’t run much better. We had to wait ages to disembark, and then queue for American immigration. In the queue, I met another English student who had just been volunteering in Peru- she did a great job of calming me down, and I later found out that she had been there when the earthquake hit, which put me in my place for worrying over a missed plane. Then- ridiculously- we had to pick up our bags, take them through customs, and then check them in again: customs didn’t even check my bags, whereas on the way out, when my bags were sent on for me, they had checked one. By the time I reached the American Airlines check-in queue, which was also very long and slow, the staff told us that we would miss our flight and would have to book another- hence more worrying in that queue, but in the end it worked out fairly well, as they put us on a direct flight. After some time spent trying and failing to contact John (phones and internet points not working), we went to our departure lounge and a couple of hours later were heading back to London. The flight went overnight, so after dinner I just slept, and the next morning I was in London and John was waiting for me… and I was home. (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 16th, 2007
11:45 pm	After a leisurely breakfast and a look at my guide book, I went off to find la Mercada Artesanal la Mariscal, the craft market- there were lots of lovely things but I didn’t have much cash left so I didn’t stay long as it wasn’t fair on the stallholders, all dressed in traditional clothes and giving friendly greetings, to browse without buying while looking like a wealthy westerner. After that I took the Ecovia bus into the old town. Unfortunately my guide book was out of date, saying I wanted the last stop when the line had actually since been extended, hence a detour into a part of town where I was glad to be able to stay on the bus until it turned around to go back the other way. When I reached the right stop, I walked up the hill into the Spanish colonial old town, beginning with the Plaza de la Independencia. From the road, I could already see the hills all around, including El Panecillo with the Virgen de Quito on top. The Plaza itself was clearly an old colonial place, with the buildings each side with their columns and moulded plaster, the most official in white and the rest with colourful panels. The Plaza de la Independencia was a leafy, flowery space, with benches among palm trees around the central column and statue, but it was empty in the rain (which had briefly turned to rain while I was in the bus). Next I walked to Plaza San Francisco- an empty concrete square, but with comings and goings around three sides and the great church and monastery on the fourth. Then down the road to Plaza Santa Domingo- less Plaza-ish, still a square but with bus stops and roads through it, and the locals seemed more puzzled to see me there, so I decided to head straight for the Museo de la Ciudad, recommended by my guide book as the best museum to see, passing under a giant pink-plastered arch beside another main church along the way. The museum itself was excellent. It was a clear contrast to Banco Central in that there was a definite focus on the town itself, and consequently on trades and commerce as well as politics and religion rather than earlier history or high culture and arts. It was based in an old hospital, one of the oldest ‘civilian’ (not government or church) buildings in the city. From the entrance hall, you pass into two central courtyards, then off into a side room with computers showing an introductory video. In one corner is a small room with painted wall and ceilings, which I though could be the hospital chapel, but I was quite wrong as I soon found out. At the end of the main room was a very off exhibition, clearly trying to be ultra-modern: the entry was behind a square metre filled with hanging foil strands, leading to a dark passage- completely dark until a ‘lightning’ panel lights up. Then were two indigenous forest scenes, which you look into then make yourself jump as something moves, which turns out to be your reflection. Then is a room with ceiling-high glass pillars, lined with various objects but no text, followed by a map on the floor then wordless videos showing various natural and human scenes of Ecuador. After that, you pass upstairs into a gallery over the actual hospital chapel- enormous and incredibly grand, the walls lined with gold-leafed carved arches framing various devotional statues. The other rooms- and there were several around the first floor courtyards- looked at the origins and growth of Quito itself, with lots of reconstructed shops and workshops. Once I had finished at the museum, I passed a military band gathering under the pink arch, then went to a supermarket to buy dinner and water. That done, I decided to have one last walk around to Plaza de la Independencia now the rain had eased off- a lucky move, as that was where the band had been heading. They were playing for an event on the balcony of the Government Palace, with someone in a suit, perhaps a politician, talking to a collection of reporters and cameras while the crowd below cheered. After that I went back to the hotel to eat, pack and settle up, ready for an early-morning departure. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
11:44 pm	Up before dawn to get our boat across to Baltra. We were on the boat in time for sunrise, but it was cloudy so it was more a case of light gradually showing through the clouds than anything more colourful. A few sealions were already up, playing and chasing and leaping in the sea, while the rest slept on the beaches. We packed onto the boat and left, taking some final pictures on the way. The journey was fairly rough but we reached Baltra in plenty of time, taking more pictures as we waited for the bus to the airport. Browsed some souvenir stands at the airport, and then went to check in, after arranging to meet some of the others (who were booked onto a later flight) in Quito that evening. And then off, straining to catch one last glimpse through the porthole of the shrinking, vanishing islands below as we headed back to Quito and then, soon after, home. The flight passed without incident- I mainly slept through it, again catching a brief glimpse of Guayaquil where we stopped briefly. Once I got back to my hotel, any plans for doing anything that afternoon vanished, as I made use of the internet, tea-making facilities, hot shower and bed. Being back at the Posada del Maple after a month was very strange: I immediately felt settled there as I had settled in there a month earlier, and it would have been far too easy to sink into that feeling as if the month in between never happened- a quick look on Facebook, adding another ten friends from the reserve, definitely helped, but I made a note to myself to watch out for that feeling once I got home: the last month had been too big, too real, too amazing, to let it fade like a dream. Then I went over to the hotel where some of the others were staying, and we had dinner together: it was nice to be with a few of the same people once more, and a fun touch in the café was the paper tablemats and little pots of chalk, so we all doodled away as we waited for our food, and the two Ecuadorian ex-volunteers showed us “Rin rin, ron ron,” an infuriating number game. After that we went on to a bar: wandering along Reina Victoria (Queen Victoria Street) really showed off the upmarket/touristy side of Quito, with glass-fronted cafés, their outdoor seating spilling out onto Plazas, with fountains, that would not have looked out of place in Montpellier. The bars were trendy and international-looking, but with a few Ecuadorian hints such as Caipirinas and canguil (salt popcorn). Then we said our goodbyes and I returned to Posada del Maple. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 14th, 2007
11:43 pm	Woke up regretting the last few rums the night before. Missed breakfast then made some rather feeble attempts at clearing mora before stopping to go and pack. Then in the afternoon, everyone who wasn’t sleeping or packing was sent to the nursery for a couple more hours, but we finished early for a football game. I wandered up to the football pitch (outside the bar), where I sat under a tree making my plant poster so the others could carry on with the nursery-sorting. Then back for dinner… and then time to go. Goodbyes took a while, as a few people were leaving at the same time- lots of hugs and photographs, and then into the taxi and off into town. We went down to a restaurant in town for the bottomless-stomached boys in the group, then walked back along the seafront: as I made the twilight walk along Puerto Baquerizo’s seafront street for the last time, I realised I was going to miss that little town, especially the sea-lions! (Comment on this)
Monday, August 13th, 2007
11:43 pm	Another morning in the nursery, then at lunchtime I took advantage of the sunshine to take some photographs around the reserve, before going back to the nursery in the afternoon. Then was my last evening on the reserve. First we had a fire, and sat around talking and playing music. Then we went to the bar, and rather a lot of rum was flowing- oops. (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 12th, 2007
11:37 pm	Ventured out reasonably early into something of a ghost town, with most people sleeping in from the night before, so went to the Mockingbird to wait for them with brunch and internet. Sure enough, as the other volunteers surfaced, they appeared there. Then I went down to the beach, just to sit for a while and paddle a bit and watch the sea lions and the sea. Back at the reserve, our random band had another jam- we really got into it, though I’m still not sure what you would call the type of music that resulted… (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 11th, 2007
11:37 pm	Once we got into town, most of the day was spent mooching around the Mockingbird and Casa Blanca (bar with outdoor seating) and souvenir-shopping. Back at the hotel, one of the television channels was having “La Hora Inglesa”, which consisted of 2-year-old Dr Who, with Spanish subtitles- a good way to learn a bit more Spanish. Then dinner and bars, and then on to a Street Party happening in the town square as part of the Diez de Agosto fiesta- the square had a permanent half-covered stage, people were dancing in the square, and the outside edges were lined with makeshift bars and barbecues- a really good atmosphere and a quite good salsa band playing, I left (reluctantly, as everyone else left) at about three but suspect it carried on all night. (Comment on this)
Friday, August 10th, 2007
11:36 pm	Today was “Diez de Agosto”, Ecuadorian independence day, so instead of a hike on the reserve, we went into town to watch the parade. This was definitely more like a military procession than a carnival, with ranks of school children in immaculately smart uniforms, majorettes, scouts, and then the army, navy, more and more navy, marines, police and coastguards. Then the boys went off to play football, and the rest of us went back up Frigatebird hill. This time, once we reached the top, we continued along the path the other side- first, parallel to the cliff top, where we got some fantastically close views of young frigatebirds in the nesting-places and females flying in to feed them; then, over to look at the hills beyond , with “Palo Santo” (incense) trees, some in leaf, some bare trees filled with epiphytes, all with ghostly-white, lichen-mottled bark. For the few of us who went back to the reserve rather than just starting the weekend in town early, the taxi ride up was a bit scary as the taxi slid around on wet muddy roads, but we got there. (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 9th, 2007
11:35 pm	This morning I asked to go back to the nursery, and was given three helpers too, so then I reasonably well considering I hadn’t known anything about Galapagos plants three weeks earlier. Carried on in the afternoon too. This evening we had an interesting set of musical instruments being played- Spanish guitar, Andean panpipes, Brazilian Capoeira bow, African bongos and Irish tin whistle- all randomly improvising together, now that’s what I call World Music! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007
11:34 pm	Back to the nursery this morning, starting to sort out the Scalesias from the other things in the beds there. It looked like this had not been done for a while- lots of bags with just alien weeds- mainly the wood-sorrels (Oxalis, pink and yellow), nettles (an Urtica, but not U. dioica) and an occasional mora plant. This was slow work, as there were so many bags with so much invasive stuff, especially wood-sorrel growing around all the saplings, but a good chance to really look closely at the plants and each section looked so much better once it was done. At quarter past tow, with no staff in sight, I just called a group over to the nursery and we got on with it. Still didn’t finish, but certainly made a visible difference, and made it far clearer how much of everything was there with all the tree species separated out rather then all being mixed up together, so I decided to try to have the job finished before I left. got to explain to them what I was doing, and what plant was what, which I managed (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 7th, 2007
11:31 pm	This morning we were replanting the area we had cleared the day before. I was sent to fetch the trees from the nursery, having got to grips with what was a Scalesia and what was a something else (mainly a Solanum)- I decided to make a poster demonstrating this before I left. In the afternoon, a few of us were planting up more Scalesia saplings from beds into bags in the nursery. Some of the others went off to hunt a wild pig- again, I appreciate it’s a very damaging invasive species (they eat baby tortoises as well as native birds and plants), and they did go on to eat it- but again, by all accounts, they did not kill it as quickly as could be considered humane. After dinner, more music- by now I was starting to play a fair few whistle tunes from memory- then onto the bar, where I was keen to dance to a Blues Brothers CD that one of the volunteers brought along but others seemed less impressed, then an early-ish night. (Comment on this)
Monday, August 6th, 2007
11:30 pm	Another morning clearing mora- I found a patch of massive mora plants, looping over the top of 8ft cat’s claw trees and rooted at both ends- so I macheted the brambles with glee. That afternoon I was on kitchen duty. The first job was to pick oranges- not easy as the lowest ones had already been taken, and involved a lot of looking up while shaking water, insects and sticks into my face, but we got there. In the kitchen, they were playing Radio Galapagos; we stopped to dance whenever it played a song they liked, and attempted conversations with my broken Spanish while we worked. After dinner, they lit a small fire on a tin sheet in the dining room- to drive out termites, from what I understood- and sang around it, then onto the bar. (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
11:29 pm	Woken at seven by music playing in the hotel, not impressed. Then went to ask about transport back to Baltra as I only had 1 ½ weeks left, then onto the Mockingbird for a leisurely brunch and internet. Then three of us went up to La Loberia, a beach out of town. The “twenty minute” (according to the guidebook) walk was more like an hour- up out of town, past a naval station with various mosaic-covered animal statues outside, and then onto a rather bleaker road of crushed black lava rock past a quarry and the airport building site, in the heat, wind and dust. The beach itself had alternating patches of lava-boulders, and sand that looked white but had black dust mixed in with it. We could see why the beach has some reputation with surfers, with curling, crashing, foaming waves making lines of white spray in the azure water. The marine iguanas were nowhere to be seen, but we did see some tracks in the sand, and there were lots of lava lizards darting over the path in front of us. Then we walked back to town to wash off the black dust and finish off errands and shopping in the few shops that re-open after siesta on Sundays. Then back to the reserve- a quite evening, playing music, then reading and writing in a hammock, then bed. (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 4th, 2007
11:28 pm	Most of the morning was spent queuing at the bank, then called home and went to the Mockingbird (internet café) and a group of us went to La Tijeretas / Frigatebird Hill. There were only a couple of actual Frigatebirds at this time of year, and they were all females and juveniles, but it was worth the walk for the view from the top: one way, across the sea out to Kicker Rock, and from that distance the Spanish name of Leon Dormido (sleeping lion) made sense; the other way, back towards the port and town. Then we went back to Playa Mann, just paddling this time and sitting on the beach writing postcards. That evening I tried some cana (fermented cane juice): one was quite enough as it was rather potent, and those who had more ended up rather the worse for it. A rather gormless Ecuadorian thought he could ‘dance’ with me, which turned out to involve shuffling his feet a bit and trying to back me against a wall, but I managed some expert avoidance dancing, with strategically timed turns to spin across the room away from him, and I went back to the hotel with some other volunteers soon after. (Comment on this)
Friday, August 3rd, 2007
11:28 pm	Today’s hike was up to the miconia forest. It seemed heavy-going at first, with the leader setting a punishing pace, but soon I got to the front of the group and found it actually easier to strike out ahead (then wait for others to catch up) than to keep plodding along behind people with slightly shorter stride lengths than mine. As we climbed, the cool breeze and mist meant I could actually run around a bit, without being exhausted by suffocating heat. It was quite different from the ‘cloud forest’ of last Thursday: on the higher ground, the miconias were stunted, mainly below 1 ½ metres, and interspersed with very low-growing ground foliage- including something labiatey-looking and ‘grass’ that turned out to be a yellow-flowered lily. We went up to a dam: some people walked along, but I didn’t like the look of the 100-ft drop to one side and the deep water to the other. We took a slightly different route back: between the miconias, the vegetation was very low-growing, with almost-boggy glades, where the water pooled on the surface, but instead of Sphagnum were small flowering plants, making me wonder whether this was because the oxygen levels or pH were higher than Sphagnum bog, or because Sphagnum-ish bryophytes has not made the sea crossing. After that we went into town- the usual routine, showers, internet, laundry, dinner, bar. Unfortunately both the usual hotels of choice were booked up, so we had to go to another one, which was not great: thin blankets, thin walls, cold showers, and fire ants in the bathroom which had crawled up into my toothbrush. Not recommended. (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
11:27 pm	This morning, one group (a big group who came together) went up to the part of he reserve where petrels are nesting: apparently they walk from their nests down to the water at night and back in the morning, but cannot find their way through the mora, so that has to be cleared. I finally got to the far production area today, clearing even more mora plants, then spent the afternoon at the nearer production area, where it seemed they were just trying to find us things to do, telling us just to tidy up, which I interpreted as including cleaning some poor trees of masses of strangling mora that could not be allowed to live. It was looped over the tree trunks, rooted at both ends and spreading across the ground- an absolute monster. After that, four of us went down to the beach. It was interesting to watch the vegetation change as we got down into the arid zone, and good to see the worst of the invasive plants fading out as it became too dry for such generalists, including the detested mora. Then the trees faded out, replaced by the Opuntia, tree-sized cacti, with a path down over the lava boulders to the edge of the cliff. We saw black-tipped gulls, perched on the cliff and flying around; a tropicbird, blue-footed boobies and frigatebirds flying past; and turtles bobbing in the sea below. The sea was really rough, battering and splashing up against the rock face. Then we walked around the headland, through to an Opuntia ‘glade’ that really did look like some strange fantasy landscape, and looked down at a bay with a canyon through the rocks and a lagoon in the bottom, but there was not enough time to go there and get back before dinner/nightfall, so we went back up, seeing the vegetation change in reverse along the way. After dinner, many people headed straight to the bar as it was a few longer-term volunteers’ last night, but I stayed back as I needed to fetch my bag from my room. It then turned out that the bonfire pile made from the old palm roofing was inhabited by some rats, so they decided to chase them out by lighting the fire and poking it with a big stick. The pile was damp so didn’t light very well, so they poured diesel on, which ignited rather alarmingly but burned off quite soon. Two rats then ran out from the bonfire, straight into the kitchen! The two reserve workers ran after them, clearly not going to rest until they caught one, and after a while squeals were heard (answering our question that they could indeed hit a rat with a machete before they hit each other’s feet instead)- I was urged to play a tune to hide the squeals and soon they emerged triumphantly carrying the poor rodent. Out there I was far readier to accept the harsh realities that animals that did not belong there and were causing problems for the native wildlife could not be left to live and breed, but I do wish they would put them out of their misery more quickly than they did rather than the delay and hysteria between the first blow and finishing it. That done with, we headed to the bar, just in time for the leaving speeches and cake. Walking back, we could see the Milky Way and Southern Cross, as well as a satellite, and the gibbous moon, big and yellow as it passed close to the equator, before giving up on the ‘proper’ astronomy and playing shape-spotting, seeing a maned lion and a rearing unicorn. (Comment on this)