Day 12

If anyone needs to ship anything anywhere, especially the far flung reaches of Outer Mongolia, I recommend DHL. Exactly 2 weeks have passed since sending our personal possessions to Astana. It felt like firing your belongings into a black hole with almost no detailed communication being relayed back other than “Status update, customs event”. Nicely mysterious. Then all of a sudden, a phone call is made to the NU staff, some extra customs declaration forms arrive for signing and then a few days after that they have dropped off 6 hefty boxes in NU reception. The trouble with the speed is that we still are awaiting confirmation of when we will move on campus. So the boxes will have to come to Riverside, be opened up so we can live and then everything packed away at some point when the move occurs.

Okay, so we have not actually seen the contents. I’m assuming they are in good order and not replaced with sheep’s heads. Hopefully tomorrow we will be reunited with the exciting things that we decided to post, like my metal whisks! Poor Wynter Duncanson; she's been here a while and still waiting for things to get through.

I know it’s a new university, but still surprised at the disunity within the school of chem. eng. I would have thought that stronger steps would have been taken to ensure we are working together. So it is down to the individuals who are like-minded enough to join forces and deliver consistent content to the students. After seeing an email about me but not to me (super hacker that I am ;-) I had to nip the discussion in the bud and made sure that certain individuals knew that I knew what they were trying to play.

We are a way off from getting our research facilities organised, so there may be an opportunity to go to a partner university in UK for a few months to get some lab work done. I’m also thinking about Japan too. Or perhaps Hawaii. Not sure if any of it will be approved. They have strict policies that cannot be altered easily or quickly. Software that I really need cannot be purchased until possibly after June when a budget update is made. Must always plan in advance. At least I have a PC arriving with some of the software on it - assuming it survived the flight from London using DHL.

Ali has nothing specific to report today, but she is fine!

 

It's Monday, which means Steve Whits has written. Looking forward to catching up on Eastbourne news.

Ray

 

Ps. It should be possible to comment now. Blogger not really clear on its security definitions.