The Adventure Continues...

Rants, raves and random observations from an itinerant epidemiologist.

  
100 in 1000
  1. Spend a week up a mountain learning to ski
  2. Visit Karoline's place in Moravia
  3. Hold a conversation in Czech (only)
  4. Drink 500ml of each of the following beers:
    1. Pilsner
    2. Staroprammen
    3. Budvar
    4. Velke Popovice
    5. U Fleku
    6. Gambrinus
    7. Krusovice
  5. Respond to at least one GOARN request (WHO and MSF are also acceptable)
  6. Travel across the Atlantic
  7. Return to South America
  8. Read a book to, or with, an impressionably aged child
  9. Participate in one NanoWriMo Challenge and come within at least 10,000 words of the goal length
  10. Have my nose pierced
  11. Have my next tattoo drawn
  12. Purchase the perfect jeans (x 2 pairs)
  13. Attend a spin class 3 times a week for 8 consecutive weeks
  14. Bake Viv's cheesecake
  15. Make David's casserole
  16. Make David's Chicken Cashew-nut Stirfry
  17. Invite 4 people who don't know one another too well to dinner
  18. Ride from Vienna to Venice on a motorbike (pillion acceptable, those less desirable)
  19. Attend a book group for at least two books
  20. Go on a choir weekend (learn and perform difficult piece in two/three days)
  21. Visit Madame Tussaud's (in London)
  22. Take an architecture appreciation course
  23. Join an all-girl group and sing a solo
  24. Publish in a scientific journal (top two authors)
  25. Cook a duck or other 'waterfowl'.
  26. Locate the Al-Timimi's from Doha Veterinary Practise
  27. Have a pedicure
  28. Maintain a Brazilian (ouch) for three months.
  29. Find a trustworthy Czech hairdresser
  30. Treat my inner-6-year-old twice a week (at least)
  31. Do the liver-cleansing diet properly (12 weeks)
  32. Don't eat out for one month
  33. Find a flat and flatmate
  34. Purchase one Joseph sweater
  35. Purchase one of the following pairs of designer shoes (they MUST also be COMFORTABLE, and be able to be worn with 4 different outfits and 2 types of occasion): Jimmy Choos, Manolo Blahniks, Christian Louboutin (Ebay or 2nd hand are acceptable)
  36. Send 5 books to the booksphere and track them.
  37. Go hanggliding
  38. Read 10 'classic' books (from 1001 Books to Read before you Die)
    1. Moll Flanders
    2. Everything is illuminated
    3. Madam Bovary
    4. Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance
    5. Catch-22
    6. Odysseus
    7. On the Road
  1. Run (non-stop!) for 5kms outside (preferably in a street race thingy)
  2. Send Christmas Cards on time
  3. Make a collage/mural out of street lights on my wall
  4. Buy a bed, build it, and sleep soundly in it
  5. Go to Africa
  6. Host an 'event' (classified as and when)
  7. Organise a 30th Birthday Party
  8. Wear a costume
  9. Sing on stage
  10. Buy a painting that evokes memories of Prague (cannot involve queues!)
  11. Learn a god-damned card game that stays in my memory (other than fish/snap)
  12. See sunrise. Be sober. Have woken for it. Excludes months Nov-Mar
  13. Take a walk and flip coins at each intersection
  14. Win something
  15. Draft a will
  16. Take a roadtrip
  17. Go to Italy already
  18. Sea Kayak around Abel Tasman Park (NZ)
  19. Get plants
  20. Take a train to another Eastern European Destination (accession countries are acceptable) alone preferably.
  21. Get UK to give me a provisional motorcyclists license and simultaneously get a 'card' license.
  22. Go SCUBA diving again - at least two dives lasting 30mins each.
  23. Go to a dentist. *sigh*
  24. Do a Czech Wine Trail. And live to tell the tale
  25. Make an 'outbreak emergency kit'.
  26. Go to bed prior to 11pm every night (inc weekends) for four consecutive weeks.
  27. Marvel over lack of tiredness
  28. Dine at a Gordon Ramsey restaurant (or Nobu)- preferably for free.
  29. Bet on the nags
  30. Do something for charity (applying and getting a 'red card' will count)
  31. Walk along the Champs Elysee
  32. Do 100 sit ups in a row
  33. Do 50 pressups (arms in tight)
  34. Make branston pickle (or nearest substitute)
  35. Cook something 'new' and 'adventurous' at least once a month
  36. Find a mentor
  37. Be a mentor
  38. Learn what mentoring is all about
  39. Meet an online person in real life
  40. Resist the flirt. Once. Just one night. It's okay if people don't immediately succumb to my natural charm. Really it is.
  41. Spend time at a spa (spa towns in the CR don't count)
  42. Send a care package to someone
  43. Get a Tata Bojs CD
  44. Take a French/German/Dutch course and SPEAK THE DAMNED LANGUAGE WHEN I HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES ME SOUND LIKE AN IDIOT!
  45. Order new contact lenses.
  46. Make a list of things I take with me when I pack for different occasions
  47. Eat lobster. Prepared by someone else.
  48. Back up the blog
  49. Put everything onto an external hard drive
  50. Find a DDR mat and console and 'dance, I say dance!'�
  51. Go to the beach and lie on the warm sand. For an hour. (with sunscreen on, natch)
  52. Take and complete a course in either: Tango, Salsa or Flamenco
  53. Join the Municipal Library of Prague
  54. Move to another country
  55. Go to a live concert of a band I actually like
  56. Pay off debts (student loan excl.)
  57. Send thank you cards for every gift I receive (other than the gift of happiness, blah blah blah).
  58. Get an agent (literary or theatre)
  59. Go to a sports bar without cringing, by personal choice
  60. Ride a rollercoaster
  61. Hold a snake
  62. Spend a day wandering around a museum (not art gallery!)
Memories of Snow
Friday 6 January 2006
I'm having to relearn how to walk all over again. While I was partying hard in England/Scotland, the weather here deteriorated to a stunning -8oC in Prague (which apparently means about -12 everywhere else!). There was a whole lot of snow on the ground when I returned, and it's snowed (albeit momentarily) each day since I've been back as well. My 'winter' coat certainly isn't cutting it anymore and I'm giving serious consideration to purchasing the abysmal sleeping bag coat.

Yesterday when I travelled to Ceske Budejovice (ches-keh boo-day-oh-vits-eh) the snow was absolutely incredible. The trip to South Moravia felt like a long walk through a wardrobe - it really WAS Narnia outside the windows. The pine trees were bent into sad looking bottle brushes with the weight of snow on their boughs, and some were lying down, broken by the volume they'd collected. It occurred to me that this wintering of the trees is a perfect way of culling the overgrowing (they'll collect more snow) or the weak (they won't withstand the weight) and getting rid of the rotten branches (they'd break really easily) - which would mean that in spring, the remaining trees (or tree minus some branches) would have better opportunities for growth. Really - this weather/ecological system thing is amazing.

Which makes me think of the article I just read in New Scientist. It made me want to work for NASA (and very little could actually do that) though I suspect I'd be better off working in the NS offices instead. It was about the two probes that landed on Mars - engineered to operate for only 90 days - called Spirit and Opportunity. What great names for two little robots that are still going through storms, up and through large craters and around humungous boulders etc. I'm afraid it definitely beats our project name Chris (CLASS-A - for the first Campylobacter Laboratory Assessment project!).

Today we went to Plzen to meet with another epidemiologist (I feel as though we're on the great epidemiology lunch tour of the Czech Republic) which was lovely. The trip out was less pretty though - to a totally different part of the country (look it up for heaven's sake!) and this time we saw fields with forests distant, and went through some fairly industrial looking areas. However, the highlight of the trip was definitely seeing a family of deer pawing the frozen ground. Poor things - I do hope they found food. Note: these aren't domesticated beasts for food either - these are the wild ones. I looked for a Lion or an Ice Queen - but alas...

I think they should put london cabs in more cities. My favourite thing about them, apart from the fact that they can take more people - which means the individual bill is less costly - is that they sit people in such a way that you can actually have a conversation in the back. I wonder if they can be purchased for private use? (Rowland? Mums?)

Staying in two beautiful flats while I was away made me very hungry to get out of my tiny space. It's not just the fact that it's small, but it's relatively poorly equipped too. I really need some shelves, but is there any point if I'm not going to stay there? Likewise with a television and a microwave. So many other places advertised on the net come with all of those things - PLUS a washing machine (divine!). So...I'm gonna try to concentrate on getting rid of debt back in NZ and then move move move! :)
posted by Nomes @ Friday, January 06, 2006  
1 Comments:

  • At 12:10 am, January 08, 2006, Blogger Lisanne said…

    Hey Nomes,
    Sounds like a great NY! And Moravia must be beautiful with all that snow! It's definately beautiful in spring as well... Great to be discovering your new country and great to make plans to move to bigger apartements... very similar lives indeed... Just not so much snow in Spain, too sunny here, our watersuplies are still only 37% full... we need some preticipation!
    See you soon,
    Lisan

     
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