Time travel

I love getting mail. More specifically I love getting snail mail: the kind that goes travels through that good (or not so) old network of post-offices and mailing centres and then lands in my mail box. There's something nostalgic about receiving 'post'.

In my post-box today was a postcard written by me, last November, when I was on a post-graduate workshop at Warwick University. It was one of our last tasks of the workshop; to write down some outcomes that we had planned to achieve within 3 months.

What was on the card is, for this audience, not relevant. What is significant is how I responded: an almost surreal feeling - it was my handwriting on the envelope (yes it came in an envelope) and on the card, but bizarrely it didn't feel like I had written those questions. And their relevance now was astounding, even just considering what I thought, back then, would be important now.

This little time-travel experience brought a smile to my face and giggle in my voice as I read the postcard. I recommend this experience as a reminder of what you've achieved by a certain time in the future. Write 3 questions to you-in-the-future, from you-as-you-are-now; seal it in a self-addressed stamped envelope and ask a friend to mail at a predetermined time in the future. A few months is enough. Then just wait for the future to happen, you needn't remember anything, except to check your post-box. I suspect it'll be a worthwhile experience for you too.

Christmas cards, tweets and squeaks

How will you be sending Christmas wishes this year?



From: Over the Hedge, 1 December 2009

Thanks to BA.com and Charlie R.

... for the upgrade to BA club class on the way out from Johannesburg to London Heathrow. What a way to fly: real comfort, real sleep, real cutlery, real food, real service.

I also have reason to believe that I sat in the same seat that KP - if you're an England / South African cricket fan who'll know who he is - sat in on his way out for the current series. Ooooh *faint*! (no not really, he plays for the other side).

Sadly on the way back from Heathrow everyone who paid for the Club seats showed up and I had to manage in World Traveller, not unlike a long tube (London Underground) ride! Noisy and a lot more squishy. Seriously though BA rocks! Travel with them if you can.

Travel tales, Part 1 - Edinburgh

That's Edin-bur-ah, not Edin-berg. Well it took me 2 days to find someone who spoke with any kind of Scottish accent! So the "bur-ah" vs "berg" story was relayed to me via an American delegate at the Nitrogen deposition workshop I attended. What a culturally diverse city with many many foreign nationals doing the business end of dealing with the public. To start with the young lady in customs at Edinburgh airport (story to be told in person to protect the not so innocent) had family in South Africa, but she hadn't been to visit them yet. And then the hotel I stayed at, on the dodgier side of town, had staff mainly from Eastern Europe. And the lady at Subway(TM) who was from some part of Asia and I struggled to understand her - although she probably wondered where I was from too. I later found out that there are a lot of young Polish people moving to the UK looking for work. The point-at-item-when-there's-no-other-option-system is well in place in Edinburgh.

The weather was typically fine, and much warmer than I expected, for the 3 days we were cooped up inside for meetings. Then the wet weather arrived with a serious gust of wind that blew for the next 1.5 days until I left. I felt really sad for the people in South West Scotland who had their neighbourhoods washed away. At least I could get a train down the east coast and not be too affected by the flooding.

I did find a way to spend some time in the wet weather before I left on the train; possibly one of the most amazing museums I've ever visited, Our Dynamic Earth. Loved the interactive style, touching an 'ice-berg' and being shaken by an earthquake, being sprinkled by a rain-shower in the rain-forest and being an astronomer for 20 mins.

Some photos are in a collection on Flickr.

Oh the workshop went well too: met lots of new contacts, got good feedback on the research our group is doing, and good feedback on my talk too.

I found myself daydreaming...

Maybe it's the extra time I have on my hands now that my crazy teaching load has lifted. Maybe it's the thought of a few days out of the city. Maybe it's just spring time and thus time to contemplate the meaning of life love phds and the universe.

Same day-dream. Different day. And always about driving the same spot of highway out of Joburg. Wishful thinking?

The heart of a savanna ecologist

I have a physiological response to nearing the Kruger Park. It starts by the decent off the escarpment, seeing the rolling grasslands become mountains covered in aloes where the roadsides lined are with umbrella-topped thorn trees and pockets of indigenous forest, where the air hangs with humidity and the smell of wood fires. The road twists and turns its way through the gulleys and passages heading east like the rivers and streams that also snake their way to the ocean. With each passing landmark my physiology changes: muscles relax and breathing deepens. My heart rate slows and races ambivalently. Slowing in response to the drugged air of relaxation and racing due to the hidden excitement in store, hoping for excellent sightings and sincere rest and relaxation.



The Lowveld and Kruger featured often on the holiday calendars of my childhood and the 'magic' resonates with me still. While "The Wombles" may have been my earliest exposure to environmental awareness, the Kruger was the nursery of my passion for savanna ecology.

This past weekend the only difference to the normal pattern was that I drove to Kruger on my own. Plenty of time for self-reflection and mandatory sing-along with appropriate travelling tunez on my iPod, Blossom. After nearly 6 hours of private karaoke my voice was hoarse. But in the Park there's plenty of time to recoup.

This short trip was planned to visit with a friend who is an academic staff member on the fall semester OTS course. Finding out more about the course and the people who run it and the students who attend it, was enriching. The students were open and welcoming and the staff friendly, hospitable and generous. I am envious that I didn't get the opportunity to go on such a course in my early postgrad days. So much to learn so little time.



While game viewing was limited there were plenty of opportunities for relaxing. The most exciting sighting was a full-on savanna fire. I now have a folder full of photos for the fire lectures I give to the undergrads. The memorable moment of the trip had to be the mini-bus full of people stopping between us and the flames, less than 5m away, to ask in a high pitched voice: "What do you guys see?". Our initial response after gasping in horror was a timid: "The fire?". Like duh, isn't it obvious we're ecologists and we're watching an ecological process happen in real time only the other side of the road.



In the quiet times of sun-up and sun-down Lake Panic provided a photogenic spot where the clicking of camera shutters and animal calls were all that disturbed the settling air.



At the heart of it all I love Kruger and all I have learnt from this special place.

Web album of selected photos here.

P.S. Thanks Jen and OTS for a special weekend.