Saturday, March 06, 2010
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
616 + 616 steps to start a Manic Monday ... 28th Floor on 8CS
Organic & sustainable is the buzz word from now on and so I cooked from Upma / cous cous kinda stuff for my lunch / dinner. Under 1 of my projects as Climate Champion I have set myself a target to reduce usage of life. "Healthy break" is what I want to promote. I see many collegues of mine going to the transfer floors ... sometimes 3/4 times a day using the lifts. I said why not tag this as a healthy break. I have a meeting tomorrow with the Gym manager and letz c how this goes. I am looking at promoting this idea at the Gym and the transfer floors.
The first day back to office was horrible... It was an implementation weekend and the usual issues around that ... struggled the whole day 11 hours at work and I just couldnt clear my last 2 weeks mail and that of the day. By the way I did get a very good reception from the team and my senior boss was very receptive and proud of my experiences. Got a meeting on Friday to impress him and then its followed up by another meeting next mid week. Din get time for my 10 miler which I skipped over the weekend ...
Come tuesday .. still resolving issues and clearing mails ... taking a handover with my boss off from next week. More and more work my way ... met with the chair of climate champions group and he was very helpful in giving me the right contacts. Finally back to running and I did a 3 miler and another 45 mins at Gym ... 6 pack is just 6 months away ... haa haa haa. And another good news is that I made potential savings of around 1.3 Mn for the group ... looking forward to getting a fraction of that as my bonus ;). EOD I am very thankful to my Boss Lorraine for being very supportive to my application as Climate Champion. If things work out as they are planned my first project on "Healthy break" will be start delivering results from 20 July.
I have decided to walk my way up / down the stairs instead of the lifts ... daily it would mean a minimum if 616 + 616. It was a very good exercise.
The first day back to office was horrible... It was an implementation weekend and the usual issues around that ... struggled the whole day 11 hours at work and I just couldnt clear my last 2 weeks mail and that of the day. By the way I did get a very good reception from the team and my senior boss was very receptive and proud of my experiences. Got a meeting on Friday to impress him and then its followed up by another meeting next mid week. Din get time for my 10 miler which I skipped over the weekend ...
Come tuesday .. still resolving issues and clearing mails ... taking a handover with my boss off from next week. More and more work my way ... met with the chair of climate champions group and he was very helpful in giving me the right contacts. Finally back to running and I did a 3 miler and another 45 mins at Gym ... 6 pack is just 6 months away ... haa haa haa. And another good news is that I made potential savings of around 1.3 Mn for the group ... looking forward to getting a fraction of that as my bonus ;). EOD I am very thankful to my Boss Lorraine for being very supportive to my application as Climate Champion. If things work out as they are planned my first project on "Healthy break" will be start delivering results from 20 July.
I have decided to walk my way up / down the stairs instead of the lifts ... daily it would mean a minimum if 616 + 616. It was a very good exercise.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Where do you see yourselves in 5 years ... ?
This question was asked to me in my interview for the first job and I remember having said ... I want to contribute to the company and grow with it. I have switched my job from my first one which means I just met part of the deal ... grow not with the same company but with another one. The next five years ... am not sure where I am going to be but it should be on similar lines of growing with the company.
Last 2 days in London never gave me a feeling as if I am back home ... I need some more time to get back to normalcy. Oxford memories are still around ... and the pressure is piling up on me to deliver what I have tasked upon myself.
Saturday was spent mostly at home planning for next week, brainstorming ideas at home/ the building/ at work, checking on all non-organic stuff at home (thought of phasing them out slowly but half of them are already expired making it easy), cleaning the fish tank, reading loads and loads of articles around organic / sustainable food and the initiatives done by some individuals / corporations to reduce their footprint. I did manage to go for my 5 miler at a good pace around the Isle and Greenwich although it was raining. I did manage to exhaust (non-organic ) sabudaana khichdi which lasted the whole saturday and sunday brunch.
Sunday was spent again reading stuff and checking on vegetable boxes in London with two really good schemes one run by growing communities (http://www.growingcommunities.org/box-scheme/order.php) and the other by River ford (http://www.riverford.co.uk/) but I prefer the growing communities as they do not do home delivery. I prefer to pick up the box myself by cycling 5 miles from office. Decent workout and reduced foot print too :). The pick up point is Hackney city farm which is this small a very beautiful farm in the centre of the city. I checked on a few happy pigs , hens, goats, donkey and some cute rabbits. The staff were very friendly and did see scope for volunteer opportunities and individual and corporate level.
Went to santo's place and tried some marathi with Arjun but ... it has become so crappy that I should now stop killing marathi. Ambu joined us in sometime and we both left for The Gun to have a Double JD to celebrate our 5 years in the corporate world. In all it means that I have missed my long run for the weekend ... which means on top of the manic monday I have another 8 miles to run. Wishing myself loads and loads of luck for tomorrow to face the music on Climate change and GPS issues alike.
Last 2 days in London never gave me a feeling as if I am back home ... I need some more time to get back to normalcy. Oxford memories are still around ... and the pressure is piling up on me to deliver what I have tasked upon myself.
Saturday was spent mostly at home planning for next week, brainstorming ideas at home/ the building/ at work, checking on all non-organic stuff at home (thought of phasing them out slowly but half of them are already expired making it easy), cleaning the fish tank, reading loads and loads of articles around organic / sustainable food and the initiatives done by some individuals / corporations to reduce their footprint. I did manage to go for my 5 miler at a good pace around the Isle and Greenwich although it was raining. I did manage to exhaust (non-organic ) sabudaana khichdi which lasted the whole saturday and sunday brunch.
Sunday was spent again reading stuff and checking on vegetable boxes in London with two really good schemes one run by growing communities (http://www.growingcommunities.org/box-scheme/order.php) and the other by River ford (http://www.riverford.co.uk/) but I prefer the growing communities as they do not do home delivery. I prefer to pick up the box myself by cycling 5 miles from office. Decent workout and reduced foot print too :). The pick up point is Hackney city farm which is this small a very beautiful farm in the centre of the city. I checked on a few happy pigs , hens, goats, donkey and some cute rabbits. The staff were very friendly and did see scope for volunteer opportunities and individual and corporate level.
Went to santo's place and tried some marathi with Arjun but ... it has become so crappy that I should now stop killing marathi. Ambu joined us in sometime and we both left for The Gun to have a Double JD to celebrate our 5 years in the corporate world. In all it means that I have missed my long run for the weekend ... which means on top of the manic monday I have another 8 miles to run. Wishing myself loads and loads of luck for tomorrow to face the music on Climate change and GPS issues alike.
Friday, July 10, 2009
All good things do come to an end ... Bye Bye Oxford
What an exciting day I / we had as a team ... last day at the field and there we are ready to take on the world to tackle climate change ... We are the troopers to the green task force. Going back a few days I was knowing no one ... today the feeling is that uncertainity is we guys ever get a chance to meet again ... reminding me of my good old college days.
As usual ... Moth catching between 5- 10 and setting traps from 6-8 ... Wytham and Beanwood ... with the usual trek group ... me , Angie and Rita. The usual chit chat ... valued opinions from Angie and Rita ranging a variety of topics ... pets, dolls, foods, conservation ... I looked so dumb between them :). Rita ... she is far more knowledgeable than any gal of her age.
With yesterday's backlog of 5 miles ... I had to go for a run on the rest day .... took a chance and went around the Village Church and circled the Farmour reservoir .... excellent run ... Thank you Oxford for the memorable 10 miler. Rest of the day was in between cramps ... and one was during the learning session that I let off my laptop down to fix the cramp... haa haa haa.
There were wrap up sessions in the afternoon .... The results were really really good. We had measured 929 trees, al time record , and other measurements around Co2. Terhi was happy with our team to have put some quality work to measure the long term affects of climate change around edges and core areas. Then we had the moth presentation ... more than 4000 moths caught and tagged ... with 2 peak days of 1000 moths. Great work from the first group of our team ... Salute ! Final round of vision and goal analysis and everyone was clear of what they want to do ... Richard finally asked everyone to list their objectives with some very good ideas ... Jean Marc and me had ideas around Micro Credit / MFI. Save paper day to be organised across the group and paper usage measured and monitored before / after. Poor Magda may have to start from scratch ... but if things start rolling in she should meet her objectives. Wishing all the very best ... may we all be successful in what we have tasked upon us.
Dinner was pizza ... followed by the last minute rush to collect all the photos ... Lynsey did a great job in selecting pics instead of the 4.5 Gb taken ... haa haa haa. While she was doing that rest of played frisbee in the hall ... then we took a chance by playing in the grass i the dark with a few torches switched on. I fell on my bum twice coz of the dew ... we still played. With lights switched off and torches lit on our faces we wished Gordon Bday again ... candle on a cake(half onion). This was followed by some scottish song and dance ... gay gordons. As usual slept at 1:30 to wake up for moth capture for the last day ... got some decent data ... locations of the traps this time around were simply breathtaking giving best view of Oxford and bright early morning.
we then had to fill the evaluation forms from earthwatch and the usual last minute senti ... of thank you ... great work. Thank you Richard, Chloe, & Dr.Khalid and all involved in earthwatch to have made this a wonderful experience for all of us in team 16... and to Rita too
We reached the train station ... and said bye ... dasvidaaniyaa ... We have now taken our boats back home ... to set sailing in the rocky waters at home. The knowledge we gathered over the past 2 weeks has given us confidence and expertise in dealing with any difficulties ... but it aint going to be smooth sailing.
With this ends my blog on Oxford ... the next 1/2 weeks are going to be the most challenging and am sure we all end up successful ... Time to sleep but with no thoughts of waking up at 0400 ... :)
As usual ... Moth catching between 5- 10 and setting traps from 6-8 ... Wytham and Beanwood ... with the usual trek group ... me , Angie and Rita. The usual chit chat ... valued opinions from Angie and Rita ranging a variety of topics ... pets, dolls, foods, conservation ... I looked so dumb between them :). Rita ... she is far more knowledgeable than any gal of her age.
With yesterday's backlog of 5 miles ... I had to go for a run on the rest day .... took a chance and went around the Village Church and circled the Farmour reservoir .... excellent run ... Thank you Oxford for the memorable 10 miler. Rest of the day was in between cramps ... and one was during the learning session that I let off my laptop down to fix the cramp... haa haa haa.
There were wrap up sessions in the afternoon .... The results were really really good. We had measured 929 trees, al time record , and other measurements around Co2. Terhi was happy with our team to have put some quality work to measure the long term affects of climate change around edges and core areas. Then we had the moth presentation ... more than 4000 moths caught and tagged ... with 2 peak days of 1000 moths. Great work from the first group of our team ... Salute ! Final round of vision and goal analysis and everyone was clear of what they want to do ... Richard finally asked everyone to list their objectives with some very good ideas ... Jean Marc and me had ideas around Micro Credit / MFI. Save paper day to be organised across the group and paper usage measured and monitored before / after. Poor Magda may have to start from scratch ... but if things start rolling in she should meet her objectives. Wishing all the very best ... may we all be successful in what we have tasked upon us.
Dinner was pizza ... followed by the last minute rush to collect all the photos ... Lynsey did a great job in selecting pics instead of the 4.5 Gb taken ... haa haa haa. While she was doing that rest of played frisbee in the hall ... then we took a chance by playing in the grass i the dark with a few torches switched on. I fell on my bum twice coz of the dew ... we still played. With lights switched off and torches lit on our faces we wished Gordon Bday again ... candle on a cake(half onion). This was followed by some scottish song and dance ... gay gordons. As usual slept at 1:30 to wake up for moth capture for the last day ... got some decent data ... locations of the traps this time around were simply breathtaking giving best view of Oxford and bright early morning.
we then had to fill the evaluation forms from earthwatch and the usual last minute senti ... of thank you ... great work. Thank you Richard, Chloe, & Dr.Khalid and all involved in earthwatch to have made this a wonderful experience for all of us in team 16... and to Rita too
We reached the train station ... and said bye ... dasvidaaniyaa ... We have now taken our boats back home ... to set sailing in the rocky waters at home. The knowledge we gathered over the past 2 weeks has given us confidence and expertise in dealing with any difficulties ... but it aint going to be smooth sailing.
With this ends my blog on Oxford ... the next 1/2 weeks are going to be the most challenging and am sure we all end up successful ... Time to sleep but with no thoughts of waking up at 0400 ... :)
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Maltese Delights ... and a mixed day
A day of mixed experiences ... I was feeling bad all day with some fever and not so good morning with the moths. Was giving my best but there were around 2 mistakes for which I was cursed myself all day. I did want to make amends for that in the evening setting the traps with Eleanor. By evening I was feeling better after a very good study session. I think my vision is clear around being a Climate champion and I want to see myself meeting all my objectives. My last two weeks were truly memorable to me in many ways and the coming two are surely going to be applying what I have learnt ..... convincing people and creating awareness and meeting my objectives. I want to see myself coming back to the center and shsaring my success story with others.
Off we went to set up moths traps and I was with Eleanor who is very intelligent and patient to answer all my questions. Wishing all the luck for the future in her field of interest. It was krishna's birthday and I called him and spoke at length on how things are going on .... new house , wife search, usual office work ... haa haa haa.
Back to hillend and the best thing for the day ... maltese delights from Gordon & team ...Qarabali biz zalza Pikkanti (Veg) & Cannelloni (Non Veg -- I will try the same with chicken when I am back home). And our team leader is Jean Marc ... we have a great team ... I wish everyone the very best in meeting what they have set themselves as objective. I seem to have also realised from this 2 week programme that I talk too much ... may be I need to stop talking and let others do ...
Finished dinner and we were up for ping pong ... Sergai ... No.1 , Jean Marc No.2 .... and others were or providing fun ... Sergai was too good. Great day of mixed experiences .. couldnt finish buffet way even yesterday .... Tomorrow is the wrap up and finetuning learning session on the vision and goals .... my low level planning ..... need to do it on my 5 miler tomorrow .... the one I skipped yesterday.
Off we went to set up moths traps and I was with Eleanor who is very intelligent and patient to answer all my questions. Wishing all the luck for the future in her field of interest. It was krishna's birthday and I called him and spoke at length on how things are going on .... new house , wife search, usual office work ... haa haa haa.
Back to hillend and the best thing for the day ... maltese delights from Gordon & team ...Qarabali biz zalza Pikkanti (Veg) & Cannelloni (Non Veg -- I will try the same with chicken when I am back home). And our team leader is Jean Marc ... we have a great team ... I wish everyone the very best in meeting what they have set themselves as objective. I seem to have also realised from this 2 week programme that I talk too much ... may be I need to stop talking and let others do ...
Finished dinner and we were up for ping pong ... Sergai ... No.1 , Jean Marc No.2 .... and others were or providing fun ... Sergai was too good. Great day of mixed experiences .. couldnt finish buffet way even yesterday .... Tomorrow is the wrap up and finetuning learning session on the vision and goals .... my low level planning ..... need to do it on my 5 miler tomorrow .... the one I skipped yesterday.
Feeling sick ..... 5 miler cancelled :(
Came in early from the moth trap ... 8:20 which was the latest one could come in. It was very very cold yesterday.... and I was feeling not so good after 10:00 ... somthing to do with not working the whole day on moths ;) Thought of taking a chance but energy level is on a low ... so 5 more added to the pile of unfinished miles.
Rest of the day looks fairly sorted out ... revisiting the goals which I set to myself and then setting the traps for tomorrow. I wish there is bright sunshine tomorrow and we catch loads of moths for Eleanor & Rita. The week so far has been disappointing with not much of useful data collected. We hardly had any recaptures.
looking forward to the maltese dish from Gordon ... keep you posted on that.
Rest of the day looks fairly sorted out ... revisiting the goals which I set to myself and then setting the traps for tomorrow. I wish there is bright sunshine tomorrow and we catch loads of moths for Eleanor & Rita. The week so far has been disappointing with not much of useful data collected. We hardly had any recaptures.
looking forward to the maltese dish from Gordon ... keep you posted on that.
Three days with the moths with just 3 hours of sleep each day.
Its taking a toll on me but its been a great experience with these beautiful creatures helping us determining the migration process of insects due to climate change. Early morning wake up at 4:00 and then be attentive is challenging but I seem to love this coz this is testing me ... and pushing me to the limits.
Marathon training is going good ... couldn't do my 8m long run over the weekend ... thats something I need to compensate this weekend ... 18 weeks away ... on 08 Nov 09.
Reading ... The book-a-week is now back in from this month ... Warren Buffet is nearing completion and hope to finish "The man who planted trees" / 7 effective ways of influencing by the end of the week. Lots of work to do around the presentation to the team ... on climate change / sustainability.
There were three sessions over the week where we moved from HSBC climate change where we had Rachael Morgan from sustainability team answering our questions. We did SWOT analysis and identified areas of focus. This was a very useful session as there were varied opinions like something which has been portrayed as weakness after a detailed discussion turned out to be our opportunity. Food was great but there was loads of confusion around what is veg and what is non veg. Monday was my rest day for the run and with Rachel in at 7 ish we couldnt go to set the moth traps ... Poor Rita had to do it for all of us. I wasnt much happy with the session personally as I couldnt get the answers I was expecting.
Thats to do with Monday and on tuesday same old 4:00 wake up , rush to the moths but being cold the monday night we had less moths to catch. So came in early and went for a run cooked some stir fry which was good ... the rest of the afternoon just went by with nothing special. Tuesday's study session was more of individual oriented and was invlving a team of 2 which would coach one another. Richard selected Magda as coach to me ... we had a good 1 hour discussion on how magda can approach the project as she said one of biggest challenges is there is no ground work done and that she had literally start from scratch ... I bored her with plans around School partnership, double side printing access level profile and Timbaktu microfinancing. Over the next 2 days I will fine tune all my plans and chat with Dr. Khalid and then set up checkpoints along the completion of the tasks.
Just realised I forgot to mention that I met Shankar from Asha over the weekend and will meet again on Friday to take an outstandin items from the climate champion workshop.
Today wednesday another nightmarish day .... havent been feeling well with the headache and messed a few numbers for which I am cursing myself although it wont be of much help. I had to be focused and extremely attentive as the data here is very important in the research. Planning to go for a run .... I have the motivation to go for a 5 miler but the energy levels or very very low.
Targets for the day:
Warren Buffet way
5 miler
The man who planted trees
Start work on the presentation
Collect all available information on organic / sustainable foods ... start next monday and I will implement what I have learnt.
Marathon training is going good ... couldn't do my 8m long run over the weekend ... thats something I need to compensate this weekend ... 18 weeks away ... on 08 Nov 09.
Reading ... The book-a-week is now back in from this month ... Warren Buffet is nearing completion and hope to finish "The man who planted trees" / 7 effective ways of influencing by the end of the week. Lots of work to do around the presentation to the team ... on climate change / sustainability.
There were three sessions over the week where we moved from HSBC climate change where we had Rachael Morgan from sustainability team answering our questions. We did SWOT analysis and identified areas of focus. This was a very useful session as there were varied opinions like something which has been portrayed as weakness after a detailed discussion turned out to be our opportunity. Food was great but there was loads of confusion around what is veg and what is non veg. Monday was my rest day for the run and with Rachel in at 7 ish we couldnt go to set the moth traps ... Poor Rita had to do it for all of us. I wasnt much happy with the session personally as I couldnt get the answers I was expecting.
Thats to do with Monday and on tuesday same old 4:00 wake up , rush to the moths but being cold the monday night we had less moths to catch. So came in early and went for a run cooked some stir fry which was good ... the rest of the afternoon just went by with nothing special. Tuesday's study session was more of individual oriented and was invlving a team of 2 which would coach one another. Richard selected Magda as coach to me ... we had a good 1 hour discussion on how magda can approach the project as she said one of biggest challenges is there is no ground work done and that she had literally start from scratch ... I bored her with plans around School partnership, double side printing access level profile and Timbaktu microfinancing. Over the next 2 days I will fine tune all my plans and chat with Dr. Khalid and then set up checkpoints along the completion of the tasks.
Just realised I forgot to mention that I met Shankar from Asha over the weekend and will meet again on Friday to take an outstandin items from the climate champion workshop.
Today wednesday another nightmarish day .... havent been feeling well with the headache and messed a few numbers for which I am cursing myself although it wont be of much help. I had to be focused and extremely attentive as the data here is very important in the research. Planning to go for a run .... I have the motivation to go for a 5 miler but the energy levels or very very low.
Targets for the day:
Warren Buffet way
5 miler
The man who planted trees
Start work on the presentation
Collect all available information on organic / sustainable foods ... start next monday and I will implement what I have learnt.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Action from the Oxford Weekend !!!
05 July '09
What a wonderful weekend .... It was Gordon's birthday(from Malta) and we wanted to give a Birthday surprise. I was used to concept of midnight wake up but the moths team were very tired and silenced me for an early morning 08:30 surprise. Did I say a surprise ... it was Gordon who gave one when he woke up 06:30 in the morning ..... haa haa haa. I forgot to say I did my 5 miler in the morning ... and that was a great feeling ... thats 16 miles this week in training.
Asked Sergey to take Gordon for a smoke and finally it was Happy Birthday Happy Birthday Gordon !!! 10 and we toook cabs to oxford and reached the botanical gardens for the punting stunt (I had been to oxford before with the gang ... but was amazed even after 2 yrs the route was in my head ... 2 goood :D). Sunny to start and heavy showers to middle it... it had all that anyone can ask for .... wonderful punt ... me , Rita , Sergey & Helene ... Everyone tried their hand at the punt , we rocked the boat or was it the yellow submarine ... yellow submarine.
Having proven our punting skills ... off we went to The Vault .... great suggestion from Chloe... with loads of organic options ... You know what I am now switching to organic products and sustainable products ... from next week.
Next ... Botanical garden ... plants , plants and plants ... some got bored and went shopping ... some din want to leave (Lynsey / Rita) ... me I was up for anything as I had been here before and was loving the gals taking deep interest in plants ... Lynsey she's a genius ... her knowledge on plants was great ... 3 versions of Monkey tail tree was cool. The guys bought something for their wife's ... I had mine saved for later. Cance encounter and we met the rest of the team at Christ church ... me Lynsey and Rita not into Christ church .. other went for a quick look and we went to THE BEAR ... so called Oldest Pub in England ... atleast it is the oldest in Oxford ... 13th Century is my great great great great great great great great great great great ... grandfather's time. Had loads and loads of Organic Honey Dew beer ... Gordon and rest joined in and partyyyyyyyyyyyyy .... The band of moths was formed ... with the hit single ... Just another manic Moth Day .... oo oo ooo ooo ... One of the best days for everyone .... approaching curfew time and we left for Hillend ... picked Magda on our way ( BF in town ... must have been fun ) ...
... Its still not over ... The second single from our lead singer ... letz go to the moths oh baby letz go to the moths ... for all the fun the driver ... sprayed attar on all of us ... Rest is loads of chit chat in the highs of 6 pints and 2 shots ... just realised that I amazed the waiter at bear when I asked him why my sausage is branded as Oxford sausage ... obviously he couldn't answer.
My sleeping pattern as you know couldnt sleep late until 1:00 but I have to be up for Just an other Manic Moth day !!!
What a wonderful weekend .... It was Gordon's birthday(from Malta) and we wanted to give a Birthday surprise. I was used to concept of midnight wake up but the moths team were very tired and silenced me for an early morning 08:30 surprise. Did I say a surprise ... it was Gordon who gave one when he woke up 06:30 in the morning ..... haa haa haa. I forgot to say I did my 5 miler in the morning ... and that was a great feeling ... thats 16 miles this week in training.
Asked Sergey to take Gordon for a smoke and finally it was Happy Birthday Happy Birthday Gordon !!! 10 and we toook cabs to oxford and reached the botanical gardens for the punting stunt (I had been to oxford before with the gang ... but was amazed even after 2 yrs the route was in my head ... 2 goood :D). Sunny to start and heavy showers to middle it... it had all that anyone can ask for .... wonderful punt ... me , Rita , Sergey & Helene ... Everyone tried their hand at the punt , we rocked the boat or was it the yellow submarine ... yellow submarine.
Having proven our punting skills ... off we went to The Vault .... great suggestion from Chloe... with loads of organic options ... You know what I am now switching to organic products and sustainable products ... from next week.
Next ... Botanical garden ... plants , plants and plants ... some got bored and went shopping ... some din want to leave (Lynsey / Rita) ... me I was up for anything as I had been here before and was loving the gals taking deep interest in plants ... Lynsey she's a genius ... her knowledge on plants was great ... 3 versions of Monkey tail tree was cool. The guys bought something for their wife's ... I had mine saved for later. Cance encounter and we met the rest of the team at Christ church ... me Lynsey and Rita not into Christ church .. other went for a quick look and we went to THE BEAR ... so called Oldest Pub in England ... atleast it is the oldest in Oxford ... 13th Century is my great great great great great great great great great great great ... grandfather's time. Had loads and loads of Organic Honey Dew beer ... Gordon and rest joined in and partyyyyyyyyyyyyy .... The band of moths was formed ... with the hit single ... Just another manic Moth Day .... oo oo ooo ooo ... One of the best days for everyone .... approaching curfew time and we left for Hillend ... picked Magda on our way ( BF in town ... must have been fun ) ...
... Its still not over ... The second single from our lead singer ... letz go to the moths oh baby letz go to the moths ... for all the fun the driver ... sprayed attar on all of us ... Rest is loads of chit chat in the highs of 6 pints and 2 shots ... just realised that I amazed the waiter at bear when I asked him why my sausage is branded as Oxford sausage ... obviously he couldn't answer.
My sleeping pattern as you know couldnt sleep late until 1:00 but I have to be up for Just an other Manic Moth day !!!
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Day 2-6 @ Oxford
Last minute change to the plans for the daily write up as I seem to have delayed the daily blog and I have forgot most of what we have been doing all week .... Its better I sum up the whole week rather than taking ages to write every day and make this boring.
The whole week was early morning wake up for the moths team whereas the trees team had a good night's sleep but still leaving early aaaaaaattttttttt 8 is not good :) Our task was to water the plots , measuring CO2 (sink / source calculation), soil temperature, soil moisture content, tag trees, measure plots, identify species of the tree, measure diameter at 1.3 metre hieght, inclination, Single / multistem, dendrometer reading (to meaure the growth of the tree). There were wood / leaf specimen placed in bags to measure the decay process. Watering concept was to actually double the amount of average rainfall between alternate plots and then measure the sink / source calculation of the trees in plot. We had around 10 plots to do the watering and in total around 25 plots to do other calculations. I am now totally on one of the claculations that we had done on that day. Forgot to tell ... we passed by an organic farm which had happy pigs and baby piglets ... I always felt they are very dirty animals and for a change I found them very cute. We had to dip our shoes through a disinfectant solution so that we dont carry germs in :).
Thats enough about trees ... so I am now jumping directly to the leaning session which had Dr Khalid doing a presentation on Climate change. All week lunch was the usual sandwich with chicken slices. I was feeling sleepy for the lectures but Dr. Khalid kept the session interactive giving me no chance to get a quick nap. The room does not have any back benches to even think of hiding in the back. The sessions were intended to capture the qualities of diferent persons ways to impress them and tackle some hard people who are generally difficult to convince, perception of climate change, and ways to handle climate change, socio economic impact etc..,
After the learning session moths team went to set the traps and we (forgot to tell my team was me , Angie, Lynsey, Sergey & Atiya ) were planning to cook food for everyone. I used to go for my evebing run ... 3 , 5 , rest, 3, 4. We decided to make some chicken dish and it finally ended up as roast chicken .... the knife was crap and it was hardwork cutting smaller pieces of chicken. The vegetable options cooked by Lynsey was also very good. Thursday I cooked chicken / quorn desi curry and I hope everyone liked it. On my own scale I would rate this 5/10 ... the tomotoes spoiled the taste and with no green chilly you miss on a very important flavour for chicken curry. I can also crib there was no jeera / cumin but overall its ok. I liked the veg version a lot. There were fajitas on one day and sergey cooked some armenian steaks on the barbeque and lynsey tried her hand at aubergines and veg kebabs.
And saturday we took a breather with 3 hours of tree stuff ... I forgot the moth guys had a horrid day I think on tuesday where they trapped record number of moths because of the night being very hot. coming back to saturday we had a session by Dr. khalid on India RCC and it was very interestng to know the Indian RCC has literally five star treatment to the champions there. I would love to go there one da just for the experince of the deep jungles in western ghats. Letz ....c
After that we went to cotswold nature park which had all different animals and plant species .... Saw a pengiun and red panda for the first time in my life. Missed the train by 3 mins ... Ice cream was good but aint that great matching my expectations. The tropical forest section was really really good and I loved the walled garden section too.
Sunday will be on another post ... watch out coz that has all the fun
The whole week was early morning wake up for the moths team whereas the trees team had a good night's sleep but still leaving early aaaaaaattttttttt 8 is not good :) Our task was to water the plots , measuring CO2 (sink / source calculation), soil temperature, soil moisture content, tag trees, measure plots, identify species of the tree, measure diameter at 1.3 metre hieght, inclination, Single / multistem, dendrometer reading (to meaure the growth of the tree). There were wood / leaf specimen placed in bags to measure the decay process. Watering concept was to actually double the amount of average rainfall between alternate plots and then measure the sink / source calculation of the trees in plot. We had around 10 plots to do the watering and in total around 25 plots to do other calculations. I am now totally on one of the claculations that we had done on that day. Forgot to tell ... we passed by an organic farm which had happy pigs and baby piglets ... I always felt they are very dirty animals and for a change I found them very cute. We had to dip our shoes through a disinfectant solution so that we dont carry germs in :).
Thats enough about trees ... so I am now jumping directly to the leaning session which had Dr Khalid doing a presentation on Climate change. All week lunch was the usual sandwich with chicken slices. I was feeling sleepy for the lectures but Dr. Khalid kept the session interactive giving me no chance to get a quick nap. The room does not have any back benches to even think of hiding in the back. The sessions were intended to capture the qualities of diferent persons ways to impress them and tackle some hard people who are generally difficult to convince, perception of climate change, and ways to handle climate change, socio economic impact etc..,
After the learning session moths team went to set the traps and we (forgot to tell my team was me , Angie, Lynsey, Sergey & Atiya ) were planning to cook food for everyone. I used to go for my evebing run ... 3 , 5 , rest, 3, 4. We decided to make some chicken dish and it finally ended up as roast chicken .... the knife was crap and it was hardwork cutting smaller pieces of chicken. The vegetable options cooked by Lynsey was also very good. Thursday I cooked chicken / quorn desi curry and I hope everyone liked it. On my own scale I would rate this 5/10 ... the tomotoes spoiled the taste and with no green chilly you miss on a very important flavour for chicken curry. I can also crib there was no jeera / cumin but overall its ok. I liked the veg version a lot. There were fajitas on one day and sergey cooked some armenian steaks on the barbeque and lynsey tried her hand at aubergines and veg kebabs.
And saturday we took a breather with 3 hours of tree stuff ... I forgot the moth guys had a horrid day I think on tuesday where they trapped record number of moths because of the night being very hot. coming back to saturday we had a session by Dr. khalid on India RCC and it was very interestng to know the Indian RCC has literally five star treatment to the champions there. I would love to go there one da just for the experince of the deep jungles in western ghats. Letz ....c
After that we went to cotswold nature park which had all different animals and plant species .... Saw a pengiun and red panda for the first time in my life. Missed the train by 3 mins ... Ice cream was good but aint that great matching my expectations. The tropical forest section was really really good and I loved the walled garden section too.
Sunday will be on another post ... watch out coz that has all the fun
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