Back, for the adventure!

Oh ho!

How long has it been since I last wrote a piece here? July 2012!! It felt like many light years ago. The good news is that I am back, not from the land of the dead, from the land of adventure!

Even a briefer introduction of what I've been stealthily doing the last year of silence is appropriate here. The last 6-7 months had been hectic: thesis writing, conference's invited speaker, another collaboration with a lab in Frankfurt, writing up an article for journal publications.  All of these are in no particular order. Now, the thesis has been submitted, the article is published, the collaborators offered me a job in their lab, the speech was overwhelmingly received and since then I have a barrage of emails asking for a position in our research group. People say I am more famous than my supervisor. I say it's luck. So lets stop self-glorifying here, I felt a somewhat narccistic promoting what I did in the last few months!

Lets talk about now! At the moment, I am learning how to canoe, and sew! These two are unconventionally put next to each other, I agree. The first, canoeing, is really a fashion to do in our department. Being guys, my friends had been nudging me for hours to join the fun. I always have a reason to back out: I've got experiments to do in the lab. Now that the thesis had been submitted, I ran out of luck, and so I am joining the guys tackling the rivers (and at some point, waterfalls!) in NZ with a canoe. Unfortunately, despite having learnt to swim properly and overcoming water-phobia (I actually think it's not the water/current, but more of the flash of memories I have from watching Hollywood's Jaw 1-4!), I am still a novice in the water. So, in the next couple of weeks, I'd be spending my time with my canoe in a swimming pool (boohoo!) practising for real stuff. So far, nothing exciting yet happening in the pool (there's nothing 'adventurous'!), therefore I've got nothing to report on that.

The second, sewing lessons, are awesome. I picked up sewing after accidentally clicking on one of the most cutest skirts I've seen on the web. And the tutorial about how to go making it is superbly easy to follow, even for a noob-sewer like me. Mind you, the last time I tried my hands on needles was...10 years ago? And that was for a school project making a pouch (which I got rated a B+). I hated sewing then, it takes up too much time when I rather do calculus! It's a different feeling now, because 1) I do it with a machine, 2) I sew what I want. So in the past few weeks, I was learning from the pros' posts in the internet on sewing terms and tricks. I am proud to say, until now, I have 2 dresses, and 1 skirt made from scratch by myself! I've worn 2 of them to school, and the compliments I have received ("Wow, that's a nice dress you've got! Where'd you get it?", "I love your dress!") have been flattering. Perhaps, it was because people rarely see me in girly dress. It's always khakis, jeans with wacky printed T's back then, you know, those apparels that help you move faster and tackle 8 flight of stairs easily.

So, there. A good start of blogging this year.. Well, stay tune for the next post. I've not decided what I want to put up yet, but maybe my new summer dress? I should go shopping for fabric then!

Comment: 2013 is going to be a superb year to accomplish things that I never imagined I could do! I hope it's going to be a fabulous year for you too, be it for a career, family or personal achievement outlook!