This year in travel

image from Big Cat Green Island Reef Cruises

After our trip to Singapore and Hong Kong at the end of 2017 we decided that this year we would not leave Australia. Hoping to save up for a trip to Europe to visit Rhy's Dad next year. A trip we keep saying will be "next year" but we're waiting for our youngest to be ready for a busy and long holiday. I've so many places I want them to see, and I have a few places I'd like to add to my country count. 

Usually when we holiday at home we go to Adelaide, Melbourne or Sydney - all places that family and dear friends call home. But this year we are heading north and I am so excited. 

We are planning to go back to where I was born, a place I haven't been back to since I was 6 or 7. Since I was my daughters age. Darwin. We're spending a week in Darwin with my mum. She's going to give us a little bit of a tour of my childhood. And we are going to spread my grandparents ashes. My Grandma and Pa both died in the 1990s, they died in Melbourne but both said they'd like their ashes scattered in Darwin. I only heard this three or four years ago. I was a bit shocked to find my grandparents had moved around the country with us. In little containers in the garage. I want to see their final wishes granted. The last of them to pass away - Pa - died when I was 11, so I never really did anything for them while they were alive. Other than bring them that unique grandparent joy only grandchildren can bring. 

After Darwin we are heading over to Cairns to visit some friends who moved to Cairns in January. We're spending a few nights on Green Island (the pic above) and I cannot wait to take Imogen snorkeling now that she is a much stronger swimmer. 

So this is what I am looking forward to this winter.  

 

2018

Welcome to 2018. Ok, welcome the the 85th day of 2018. I'm clearly doing a brilliant job at writing everyday.  This year is going well, so far. We moved into our new home at the start of the year, my health is back on track and my PhD is steadily chugging along. I'm deep into the recruitment phase. It's been an interesting learning curve. Most people are so polite and don't want to say no straight away. Being "part-time"  has also added another level of difficulty to recruitment, initially I thought it would just be an advantage as I would have time overall to recruit, but I have less time in the week. Let's see if I can come back tomorrow and expand on the other things I've been up to,

Cheers.

Pausing recruitment

We're off to Singapore tomorrow and I am feeling a bit anxious about pausing recruitment, I felt like I was just getting on a roll with my contacts and knowing where to be and who to ask to find participants.
I stopped earlier than planned because my husband and children were in a car accident on Saturday (they are fine, just some grazes and a little shaken up) and my car was wrecked.

It's the only car that I feel comfortable driving, so the loss of my car resulted in drawing my 2017 recruitment to an end 3-4 days early.
We also have to move out of the airBnB tomorrow and our apartment is not quite ready, so we've got to distribute our stuff all over the northern suburbs of Brisbane before we leave.

We need this holiday. Our family has had a stressful year.

We have some good news! Our house has settled and the keys have been handed over.

I'll head over to our travel blog while we are overseas and post about our trip there. 

Preparing for our holiday

I picked up my passport today, it's not long until we're overseas for a couple of weeks, for a short but much needed holiday. I'm trying to organise my thoughts about where we should go. Travelling with a three year old and a six year old, I don't want to push them too hard, here are some of the places on my Singapore to-do list.

Singapore 

S.E.A Aquarium 
Opens at 10am open until 7pm, appears to be open 7 days a week. ?Monday.
$30/adult 

Universal Studios 
Opening hours 10am-9pm
?fireworks at 9:30pm. 

Adventure Cove Waterpark 
around $38 
Or was it wild wild wet?

Gardens by the Bay 
?Christmas Wonderland 

Singapore zoo 
8:30-6:00pm 
?breakfast with orangutans $232.84 

Santa in Singapore 
The Winter Wonderland at Marina Bay Sands wouldn't be complete without Santa himself. So, don't miss out on meeting him and make sure you've been extra good this year to make it onto Santa's nice list! He’ll be at MBS from 15 November until 23 December everyday from 5:00pm to 9:00pm and at 12:00pm to 4:00pm on weekends and Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Tanglin mall: Take a picture with Santa Claus in a magical Christmas setting! The photos will be printed instantly and presented in a beautiful Christmas folder. Don't miss to meet Santa from 22nd of November to 23rd of December, 11:00am to 7:00pm and on the Christmas Eve from 11:00am to 4:00pm.
At the airport? If your family is up for an adventure, then make your way to Changi Airport Terminal 3, where you can experience a magical Christmas at Bikini Bottom! Meet up with SpongeBob SquarePants and write your Christmas wish and receive a special gift!

We also have a week in Hong Kong!

This too shall pass

We're days away from December 2017, and 2017 and all of the issues it has thrown at us appear to be coming to an end, all at once.
Our house is going unconditional tomorrow (hopefully). I would definitely recommend selling your own home, I'm going to do a post with tips and tricks to make the process smoother for other people.
Our apartment is getting there, Rhys took some photos this afternoon and the new floors are down.
Our holiday is just over two weeks away! We're off to Singapore and Hong Kong. Somewhere new for a change, instead of a fourth trip to Hawaii since Imogen was born (I really love Hawaii! I could visit every year).
My health is getting there, sure I have issues that I'm still working on, but I'm up and functioning. September/October seem like a bad dream.
I'm recruiting again (well trying!).

So future me, deeper into your PhD, please remember how bad spring 2017 got.
The pain of untreated RA, the stress and uncertainty of our living arrangements. The exhaustion that came with trying to hide every problem from the kids. If you made it through 2017 you can make it through the next thing. Good luck. 

Australia says YES to love

 I was so relieved when my country didn't chuck a Brexit or Trump yesterday morning when the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced that love won. We didn't have an insane silent majority, too afraid to let their bigot flags fly in public. No, the vote mirrored what you can see out in public, it was similar to the opinion polls. It's time for equality.

Australia voted yes when asked the question should same sex couples be allowed to marry.

The postal vote really annoyed me, I've been married for 7 years, why are you asking me if another couple should be allowed to get married? It really is none of my business. Rhys asked me to marry him on March 29th 2008 and I said yes. I feel like that should have been the first and last time I had a say on whether a wedding should go ahead or not.

But if we're having a vote, I am voting YES. And I made sure that everyone where I was living at the time (mums house) voted YES too. Grabbing their mail, watching them tick yes and making sure that they were posted back that same day.

When the stats man announced that Australia had voted yes I cried. Relief that the world isn't as bad as I feel like it is right now. While I was easily able to get married, I still know what discrimination feels like, I know it when I see it. I know what it is like to be rejected from an institution because of things about me that are out of my control.
I hope that our government passes it into law quickly. I look forward to 2018 being the year of "I do".
Congratulations to the LGBTQ+ community. 

Just need to write the next post

I have really been struggling to complete any one project this week, bouncing between reading abstracts for an upcoming conference, writing an ethics proposal for a retrospective study, recruiting and data entry of the data that I have so far. I'm finding that I have islands of time when I am extremely successful and get my goals for the time done. But I've had a lot of potato time this week. Sitting in front of the laptop, feeling like a potato. I have a lot of good intentions, but I'm burning through my energy very quickly. Or even finding it hard to get a day started.  And then I feel my anxiety levels rise. I am have not met my goals for the morning so the entire day feels like a write off. Which just isn't true, most of my best work is completed in the afternoon or at night, I just need to get used to setting aside that time for PhD work and face the fact that, when it comes to self-directed learning, I'm never going to be a morning person. 

At least I've added to the blog. 

A case of the Mondays

In this situation I'm my own co-worker

Can you get a bad case of the Mondays working from home? I swear out of all the days of the week, I struggle the most on Mondays. I spent this morning reading. I answered some emails in the afternoon, but it was not until after 2pm that my work ethic really kicked in and I finished off a task I'd been meaning to complete this morning. Leaving this afternoon's tasks to tomorrow afternoon, because I have work tomorrow morning.  This might sound hippie dippy, but I did some anti-anxiety meditation before I was able to get stuck into it. I've been carrying around a lot of stress, anger and pain this year. With the apartment, selling our house and my health issues. I'm finding that I have dark days where I cannot see into the future, I cannot see happy times, only the pain and disappointment and frustration that we are currently dealing with. And the control freak in me hates that so many things are out of my control right now. So I listened to a youtuber who gave me permission to let those issues go. If not for tonight when I'm trying to fall asleep, at least for the moment when I'm trying to get some work done.  I know that years are arbitrary measures of time. But I am so done with 2017. I can't wait for the end of the year and I really do want to start of the new year fresh, with a sold house, an apartment we can move into and my RA under some level of control. It's almost midnight! Good night! 

Christmas shopping 2017

Immy's favourite doll is an Our Generation doll, whose name is currently Lucy (she was formerly known as Ellie, and I bet it will change again).  I like this doll, it doesn't have any make up on, it's got freckles and looks like a human. This doll has so many accessories. Trust Immy to request the most expensive one. This doll has her own ice cream truck. I was thinking it might be around $100. Nope. I'm looking at $250. Parental guilt will probably result in me buying it. We've had a rough year. She's had to move twice (with a third move to come) she's lived out of a suitcase since August and will not be settled into her new home until after Christmas. I was hospitalised in October. I just want her and her brother to have an amazing Christmas. They sense the stress Rhys and I have been under this year. I'd like to give them an amazing Christmas. 

I have a opposite problem with my son Arch, I have no idea what to buy him. He loves dinosaurs, power rangers and puzzles. He has a lot of dinosaurs, power rangers and puzzles. 

I like to buy them a toy, an outfit and a book for each birthday and Christmas. They are so spoilt by their grandparents that we don't need to buy any more than that.  

Everything takes so much time

I'm getting better at predicting how long things will take to complete. But I'm still surprised by how long some tasks take. I remember with submitting an article last year I sat down thinking it would take two hours to check and format my references. EIGHT hours later I was ready to submit. I think that it's a combination of wanting/needing to be as accurate as  humanly possible and also having the feeling like you have as much time as you can spare to dedicate towards these things. I shudder to think of the hours I've spent on some tasks. I think being part time adds to it, I've never felt like I've had a long period in a research groove. I'm constantly finding myself picking up on a task that I may have started 3 months ago but had to set aside for something more pressing. 

I google PhD memes and the marriage vs the PhD one made me laugh. Rhys and I have been married for exactly 7.5 years today! He is so very supportive and he shows so much patience when trying to teach me how to use excel. A program that I still believe is the least user friendly program I've ever come across. I don't understand why he loves it so much. He's an engineer. I guess that should explain it. 

This week in inspiration

I enjoy watching youtube videos. I decided to search PhD on youtube recently to see what popped up, within a couple of days Professor Tara Brabazon's channel started popping up. The channel is called Office of Graduate Research at Flinders University. I'm loving this vlog. Her video on part time students filled me with a little bit of fear (so motivation), a little bit of hope and honestly a tear in my eye at the end. Yes it's hard being part time. But it's doable.

Other video's I've enjoyed so far have been on topics like starting a blog, completing your PhD, upsetting your supervisor and I noticed there is one on procrastination that I'll watch later.

Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwdaNGhdSAwzdztgLTqyhgA/about