seasons

We've been here for such a long period of time, now, that I can feel the seasons changing. No more are the days when we'd be excited to leave early at 5:00p with barely a glimpse of daylight left in the sky. As I look outside the window today, it is now almost 6:00p, and it seems as if there's still a good half hour of light left and we will probably stay at the office for at least another hour.
No more do we complain so much about the cold (too much) - I'd like to think that it's because we're finally getting adjusted to this Melbourne winter, where the weather can change drastically from minute to minute. From wind and rain to clear skies and sunny. I can't say that I've grown to actually enjoy this weather, but I feel well prepared for San Diego "winter" now. It feels a little ridiculous, but just this last weekend after coming back from the country, the City actually felt "warm" with degree (Celsius) in the single digits. I'm sure back at home, I would be freezing to death. Day by day it feels warmer, but likely due to the coming Spring.

The time we have left in Australia gets shorter by the day, and soon we will be off exploring New Zealand, and even sooner, we will be heading home. Time sure does seem to fly, and I am really happy to say that this has been a tremendous experience, and I feel that I have learned a lot not only in the research aspects, but culturally as well. I feel that I have grown as a person through these past short months.

We're just starting to feel like we kind of belong here and are not just tourists or visitors to the country (although staying in a guesthouse definitely keeps us feeling "tourist" status). People will ask us if we're American, and it's funny because sometimes we'll be confused and ask, "How can you tell?" Well, obviously our accent gives us away, but it's interesting how we no longer feel all that different and don't feel like we stick out so much anymore just from the way we talk.

And now I leave this short, hopefully insightful and reflective and quite random post and get back to my research, which is making slow progress. I am still in the process of trying to find steady state for my cardiac model using Nimrod. There have been some bugs that have been discovered in the process of running Nimrod, and so many times it takes hours before the jobs fail. Nonetheless, it is always a challenge to figure out how to debug the program, and more times than not, it's due to silly syntax error, which is oh so frustrating on my part. But it's all good because it's just part of the experience. (: