Healthy Living

Hi all! As some of you may remember, I put out a plea a while ago for recipes that were reasonably healthy, but not oniony or garlicy!

I did get some good ideas, (the link to my recipes is broken, so you'll just have to take my word) but more would be appreciated. I had to have a medical exam on Monday and was told that my blood pressure is too high, and I need to lose about a stone and a half. This worries me, as I've only just recently lost half a stone, and I'm already at the stage where I need to buy new clothes!!

The crucial point of course is that I very rarely do exercise. There are two sports university centers here, one on the main campus and one on the campus that I'm based on. The main campus one is a tedious walk/bus journey away, but the one on my campus only does team/group activities, (badminton, squash, table-tennis, football etc) so no gym :(

This means that I'm going to have to find some other chunky monkey who wants to get fit! This is good for two reasons:
1) I won't have to go to main campus
2) I will feel obliged to turn up for their sake, so won't slack off as much!

I've also started to do more juggling with my 1 kilo balls and going for more walks, so I'm hoping that will help too! I'm off for a walk right now before knuckling down for some more work. You may be able to tell that my concentration isn't at a premium by the short time between this blog entry and the last one!

Presentationtastic

This week has been a very hectic one.

As part of my PhD I am a member of a research group which links together lots of academics who have a common set of interests. This research group has weekly meetings to discuss the research that is going on in the group and hopefully get some good feedback, or share reusable ideas. This week was my turn to speak.

As part of my PhD I am also a member of a more specialised group, dedicated to robotics and AI. This group has monthly meetings to discuss cutting edge research being done in other universities in the field. This week was my turn to speak!

So two largish, (both supposed to be about 30-45mins plus about 30mins for discussion/questions) presentations to prepare.

The robotics one went ok - but my choice of paper was poor and I think that it threw a lot of people who were new to the group. The discussion was dominated by two or three people at the end, whilst many of the others checked their watches! However, from a selfish point of view the discussion was full of interesting ideas and challenges that I had failed to consider, and served only to deepen my understanding, (if not my regard) for the paper.

The ASAP, (the name of my group) presentation went far better it seemed. I did occaisionally see a few confused faces, but there was a healthy number of heads being nodded and some interesting questions at the end. The group was also a good size too, so I didn't feel too daunted. I can't say that it radically altered my point of view, but I hope that other people might have been able to take away some good ideas. The talk itself was supposed to last for about 45 mins, but I sped up a bit under pressure and actually only went on for about half an hour. Still, that met my minimum requirement, so all was well.

Now I get back to doing proper research... where is that coffee cup?....

Errrrr

Apologies for those reading my blog on the website - Blogger appears to have decided that the humble apostrophe needs to be upgraded to some weird and wonderful collection of random characters!

I am yet to confirm if RSS is affected.

I am still alive!

It’s been a while since my last blog, with good reason. As many of you know, last month, Alice and I split up. I'm not going to blog about it in any detail, but it was amicable and I think that we should be good friends. Thanks to those who have supported me recently!

I’ve had some time off and spent last week with the soon-to-be, Dr Brogden, who fed me cream teas and took me rock-pooling, (this involved me screaming like a girl when I was exposed to my primary source of fear – fish!!!)

In more positive news, I’m planning to visit my sister in December, so will be off sunning myself in Oz over Christmas! Barbequed turkey anyone???