It seems early this year, but the people who will be coming to join me at UQ here next year were confirmed. Time is moving fast even in this small town, probably because we can never manage to catch up with the stuffs that we are supposed to read...  Anyway, it's one of those unproductive nights again, and I shall devote such time this week to do a YK's typical week at UQ on this blog. People coming next year shall get a preview of what's life going to be like. 

My Sony Ericsson k800i will assist me in presenting my perspectives to on a typical monday here:

Date: 12 May 2008

My first lesson today is the National Park Management tutorial at 11.00am, but I arrive on campus earlier for a meeting about a presentation that we are going to give in Wildlife Management class later. This arrangement is good as I can come together in a car with the others, who have classes at 8am. 

We are running a little late this morning because we didn't sleep well last night. Something happened- a mouse was found running in our house at 2am! I was waken up twice by the commotion and was a little upset that they were making so muh noise. I thought they must be killing spiders again, although I did wonder why they need to be so dramatic this time. Could it be some big interesting insects instead? Anyway, I was too tired to bother and went back to sleep after burying my head between pillows.

I woke up to see the door to the laundry and toilet closed, the gap below stuffed with papers and a chair place before it. A note tagged on the door knob said: Do not open the door. There is a MOUSE inside. 

Oh dear... now I understand the reason for the drama. This is not exactly a typical monday afterall... Anyway, I have to get to the sink where my toothbrush is, so I enter by the back door and do a search for the mouse. Coincidentally, I had told the girls yesterday about my experience with handling house mice in my animal handling practical last Friday, and now, we have a mouse in the house! 

I search thoroughly and even look into the toilet roll as I know how small a house mouse can be! No mouse. It must have slipped through the back door somehow. 

 10.47am- heaing for tutorial from the library. Two beautiful rows of Canary Island Date Palm (Phoneix canariensis) under a clear blue sky. Another wonderful morning ( I have forgotten about the mouse).
 

11.26am- at National Parks Management tutorial. We are having a stakeholder meeting and one of our favourite lecturers here is acting as the head ranger of a fictitious new national park. Each of us have to give a short presentation on our needs and whether there are conflicts with other stakeholders. I am in the team that represents the bird-watchers and we have issues with many of the other groups! These include the 4 X 4 driving club, pastoral owners and tour operators. It is quite a fun session and a good way to learn about the various issues that a national park faces. We will need to address these issues in a management plan that we have to submit by the end of this month. This takes up 30% of our final grade, so it's quite a major assignment.      

12.15pm- lunch at Dining Hall. I must be too engrossed in my meal and forget that I have set out to do this post. Will talk about the dining hall next time. A buffett meal here costs A$6.60, so we usually eat here only once a week. Most of the other days, as classes for the other girls are only in the morning, we have lunch back home.   

12.56pm- at my hide-out in the library. An hour more to the next lecture, shall do some last minute work on my presentaion script . But half of the time I am sleeping here, guess it's after lunch?  This is quite a nice place to snooze though ;-P

14.02pm- This lecturer, Luke Leung reminds me of LTM, especially when he laughs. Today's lecture is a special one as a few 3rd-year students have expressed interests to learn more about the job market for wildlife ecologists. I pick up some useful points on how to articulate your experience to address the criteria set out by the employer, so as to increase your chance of being shortlisetd for interviews.      

15.20pm- relaxing after our group has finished presenting. This presentation is the 2nd one out of the 3 assessable tutorial presentations (by peers as well as tutor). There are 3 groups in total and we are all doing the same topic. Thus, by the time the 3rd group is done, we will all be experts on predator-prey interaction. This slide is funny.

4.00pm: Pesentation Over! The feeling of "one more down" is always good.

4.05pm: near Dining Hall. I play "hero" to the rescue for yet another crested pigeon that is attacked by the noisy miners! Mari helps to chased the aggessors away with me. Actually, there are 2 birds- a big one and a small one! The mummy pigeon (I assume) is protecting the young one by shielding it against the pecks of the miners. The small one is really really adorable. "Kawaiiiiiii". 

I really think we should cull the noisy miners, but I guess it is going to be complicated. There will be both ecological and social challenges.  
   

      


18.29pm: 4 women in a small kitchen- it's a wonder that peace and order is still maintained. Curry and tom yum- are we killing ourselves? We have Nik, Janice and YH with us tonight and Janice has managed to convince us to cook tom yum soup even though we have planned to cook curry. This little lass can probably finish the whole pot if we didn't stop her. She starts drinking already when the soup is still cooking...The way she drink soup makes a nurturer like me want to cook soup for her next time.   

21.11pm- half-dead as I try to figure out where we have gone wrong in our calculations. We are doing a statistical analysis report for a simple germination experiment that Nik, YH and I have done for Biometrics module. When we still cannot figure out by 11pm, we surrender and decide to clear ur doubts at the tutorial tomorrow.

There was no time to worry about the little mouse at all.