That was pretty cool...

I just returned from work today capping off quite an exciting week! It's hard to think that I've been here in Melbourne for over a week now! Time is going by quickly.

For my return to the Graduate House today, I ditched the public transportation system. Anita let me borrow her car and so I drove back. Apparently, automatic transmission is not at all common here, so it was really different not only driving on the left-hand side of the road, but also doing so in a manual transmission vehicle. Shifting with my left hand was quite a bit different. Luckily, the peddles are in the same order as they are in an American car. Things might have been really crazy if those were reversed. Anyhow, after some intense first few minutes of trying to figure out what I was doing, things settled down quite a bit. It really wasn't hard at all to do, but it is a little different realizing that a left hand turn is the simple turn whereas a right hand turn is a little more complicated. In any case, it was a lot of fun and I made it back without a problem.

Anita's generosity with loaning me the car will make it easy for me to go do some sightseeing this weekend! I haven't decided what I'm going to do exactly. I need to read up on a few options and then look at the directions and see what I feel comfortable with.

Today started like a usual work day with taking the train out to Anita's house, talking over coffee, and then catching a ride with Tim into CSIRO. The day was pretty normal in terms of getting experiments done. I had a nice lunch with Matt, Michele, and this other kid whose name I can pronounce but can't spell (yet). We had a good time talking over lunch and coffee and it was interesting to see the different perspectives. Michele is from Italy and has been in Melbourne for about a month now. He will finish the Italian equivalent of a master's degree in the coming months and then return to CSIRO for a Ph.D. The other kid whose name I can't spell is actually a 15 year old high school student whose Dad works at CSIRO. He has been working there for the summer and will actually be publishing a paper on his results. Apparently the kid is an absolute genius... I know I wasn't thinking about writing scientific journal articles when I was 15...

We had group meeting in the afternoon. Group meetings here are quite a bit different than back home. First, we had food and wine in the meeting. Dr. Freeman often points out that we could probably get away with that once at UT and then they would cart him away in handcuffs... Anyhow, the discussion was great. Most of our group meetings lack in depth discussion, but here we talked quite a bit. It was nice because I was able to contribute some insight from our work at UT and even teach some basic thermodynamic concepts as they relate to polymer swelling! All in all, it was a good experience and I am looking forward to my group meeting talk in a few weeks!