So, tomorrow starts the living below the line challenge. I'm quite glad it's here as I've been thinking about it for a while now and really want to get going.
I'm really glad I won't be the only one doing this, it's always fun to have others going through the same pain and misery as you. When Hannah said she would do it, I was really happy, when she said she had managed to convince her family to do it as well I was amazed. So, we're all going to be surviving on £1 a day each for food, trying to battle hungriness, temptation and grumpiness together.
I'm on holiday in the Black Mountains at the moment, going back home tomorrow, so will have to eat the low cost breakfast (porridge) and lunch (chickpea, cauliflower and chapatti) here.
We still had a stack of food left last night so instead of going out, as we had planned, we stayed in and ate the remaining food. It seemed slightly silly if we were going to be trying to live frugally for a week if we started by throwing away a load of food. So, we had a mish mash of salad, boiled potatoes, crisps and cake. It was very good although I seemed to eat a surprisingly large amount of salad leaves...
I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Who know's what will happen!
So, tonight Hannah and I went to the dreaded Asda to shop. I never like going to Asda, especially at Cribbs Causeway. This is because it is far too big, I have no idea where anything is, it's full of people that don't care about anyone else, the food never tastes that great and I really can't stand their TV adverts. However, to get the cheapest food, it is normally the best place to go. So, on a large dose of valium and shopping list in hand, Hannah and I went into Asda hoping to find all the food we need for next week.
With such a tight budget, we had very little chance to allow any food to be over the price we researched from the internet. We started looking for the fresh vegetables. We had allowed ourselves 21p for carrots, which equated to 300g. It took 4 or 5 attempts to find the right combination of carrots to get this amount. We had a similar issue with the leeks. The potatoes were a bit easier, as these came in pre-priced packs. When we reached the onions we found a huge problem. The price we saw on the internet on Monday was an offer price, and now they were double the price/. What should we do? Did we buy the same amount of onions and just take a hit on something else, or use have the amount? In the end we decided we'd just have to use half the amount as the pricing was so tight we couldn't allow for it anywhere else. When we found the mushrooms, there were none left at the price we saw on the internet, 250g for 83p. However, there were some cheaper mushrooms - 400g for 79p, so we went for these instead, which would help a little bit allowing for a bit of slack in the budget, or allow us to eat a few more mushrooms for the same price!
Most other items we found OK, until we came to the rice. Now, from our internet research we had found the cheapest rice was 49p for 1kg bag. However, as we were coming up to another pair of bank holidays, all this rice had been sold. The next cheapest rice was more than double the price. This would add an extra 3.5p onto our total for Tuesday and Thursday (see the menu), which would tip us over the £1 a day level. What should we do? Do we reduce the amount of rice we eat and risk going hungry? Hannah asked one of the shelf stackers if they had any in stock. He looked at us a bit strangely, why did we want this compared to any of the other products? It made me feel embarrassed and shy - should it have done so? I don't really know. When he said they didn't have any in stock, we had to make a decision, so we decided to buy the rice and figure out what we'd do later (a cross-that-bridge-when-I-come-to-it attitude). A similar issue happened when we came to the biscuits. We were going to buy cheap own brand chocolate biscuits to treat ourselves during the week when there was some spare money (I'm a bit of a chocoholic). However, there were none left. In fact, the only cheap biscuits left were Rich Tea biscuits, so we took these. It wouldn't be as much of a treat, but still any biscuits are better than none at all.
At the checkout, we looked at all the food we had for the next week. It wasn't much. And on the face of it, it didn't look like it was going to be particularly tasty.
Shopping on the checkout conveyor belt
Receipt - £15.59 for everything, but some bits only a proportion is required
On the way home, I crunched a few numbers and found that the savings we had made on the mushrooms would allow us to eat the same amount of the more expensive rice. However, some of the price increases we found really would sting a little - the doubling of price of the onions, meaning we would only be able to use half the amount of onions would definitely change the taste of the food.
I thought about the problems with shopping at somewhere like Asda. Yes, they did have very cheap food. But because they have cheap food, lots of people go there to buy it, and so it is quite regularly sold out. If you are cash poor, then you probably aren't able to stockpile food, and probably most of the food you eat is perishable. So, what happens when you go to a store to buy the food and they don't have the food you require for the price you can pay in stock? Do you go buy the next cheapest food, but possibly financially burdening yourself for the next week? Do you try and find a replacement - although what sort of replacement could you get for something like rice? Or do you just go hungry and hope that the next time you go shopping it is in?
I wondered what would happen if I actually did live in extreme poverty. Would things like this happen all the time? I felt so stressed trying to work out what to do about the rice, the embarrassment I felt when we asked if they had any of the cheaper rice in stock. If this was a matter of eating or not eating then I hope I would just take it on the chin, but it must add to the worries.
Some of you may be aware of the Living Below The Line campaign. The challenge is to live on £1 a day for all your food and drink for the first working week of May (2nd - 6th), which equates to £5 for the week. The £1 a day come from the limit of extreme poverty, normally given as earning less than $1.25 a day. This is roughly the same as £0.75 a day, but not only must this pay for food, it also has to pay for everything else - rent, water, electricity, household items etc. For more information on this see here.
Now, living on just £1 a day for food is going to be quite a challenge, and the idea is to get an appreciation of how people live in the developing world. I can never pretend that by doing this I'm going to understand what it is like to live in extreme poverty. As I found in Nepal, I knew at the end of the day I have an emergency stop button, a Get Out Of Jail Free card, which i know I can pick up and cash in. To my rescue will come the bank, my parents or even the government. I will never be able to understand what it is like to live without that. However, I hope that it will be able to start to give me an understanding of the issues that affect people living in real poverty. To me, this isn't about raising money for MRDF or whoever the final funds will go to - although I am going to donate in all the money I'm going to save on food next week to MRDF's partners - it is about understanding people that little bit more, seeing things from their point of view, as Atticus Finch said "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." (Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird). By the way, if you have never read To Kill A Mockingbird, read it. It is one of the most amazing books I think I have ever read.
I managed to convince Hannah to join me in doing it, and so we decided to try and share some of the cost. So, the first job was to come up with a menu. Looking at the recipes online, we came up with versions of our own. So the menu for next week looks something like this:
Menu
Monday (Cost 93.9p)
Breakfast - Porridge Honey/Jam
Lunch - Chickpea and Cauliflower with Chapatti
Dinner - Jacket Potato with a Vegetable and Tomato Sauce
Tuesday (Cost 96.5p)
Breakfast - Porridge Honey/Jam
Lunch - Potato and Leek Soup with Chapatti
Dinner - Fried Rice and Vegetables
Wednesday (Cost 93.9p)
Breakfast - Porridge Honey/Jam
Lunch - Chickpea and Cauliflower with Chapatti
Dinner - Jacket Potato with a Vegetable and Tomato Sauce
Thursday (Cost 96.5p)
Breakfast - Porridge Honey/Jam
Lunch - Potato and Leek Soup with Chapatti
Dinner - Fried Rice and Vegetables
Friday (Cost 96.8p)
Breakfast - Porridge Honey/Jam
Lunch - Chickpea and Cauliflower with Chapatti
Dinner - Pasta with a Vegetable and Tomato Sauce and cheese
As there is a little left over each day, this can allow tea drinkers to drink some tea, or biscuit eaters such as myself, to indulge a little. From this menu, we scoured the internet trying to find the best deals on all food. Unfortunately, the cheapest seemed to come from Asda, not my most favourite of supermarkets (although probably more popular in Bristol that Tesco at the moment (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-13167041)). So, our shopping list and costs became as follows:
Shopping List
Honey - £1.06
Jam – 38p
Porridge Oats 1kg – 75p
Plain Flour 1.5kg – 52p
Salt 750g – 40p
Vegetable Oil 1l - £1.44
Baking Potatoes (bag of 4) – 70p x2
Onion 1kg – 50p
Leek – 62p x2
Frozen Cauliflower 900g – 76p
Dried Chickpeas 500g – 78p
Chilli Flakes 28g – 57p
Cumin 41g – 40p
Pasta 500g – 9p
Plum Tomatoes – 31p x3 tins
Mushrooms 250g – 83p
Carrot – 7p x3
Long Grain Rice 1kg – 49p
Tin of Sweetcorn 326g – 32p
Wyke Farm Extra Mature 200g - £1.50
Now the more keen mathematicians amongst you will notice that this doesn't add up to our allotted £10 between us. However, some of the items (e.g. honey, oats) will only be partially used, so we're only going to take the cost proportional to that which we've used. This may not be strictly speaking fair - could someone living in extreme poverty be able to afford these large items, and would we be saving money by doing it this way? - but as many items can't be bought in any smaller sizes (at least at a reasonable price) then this is the only way I can see of doing it.
Anyway, I'm going to be blogging about the whole experience, the food, the taste, the hunger and everything else all of next week, so keep your eyes out or have a look out on twitter (http://twitter.com/saminnepal) to see how I'm getting on. If you'd like to give some money for this campaign then look here (http://bit.ly/dLqvwP), although as I have said before, raising money is not my prime objective.
We're going to be shopping on Thursday, so I'll report back then.
I went to Longleat Safari Park and Adventure Park at the end of March to celebrate my birthday. So to break up the endless monotony of my writing, I've included some photos in from that.
Longleat house
It's been a tough few weeks in the PhD front. I've done a few runs of the turbine in a couple of positions and got some good torque and power outputs from the turbine. However, when they're compared with the model I've got, they are around 20% out. There are several explanations for this, as discussed last time - see here. However, I've still not been able to rectify these problems over the last couple of weeks and it's been really starting to get on my nerves. It's so frustrating, working on a possible solution for 2 or 3 days then ending up at the same point that I started with. I am determined not to let this get the better of me. So I'm going to try some different methods for modelling and also look at changing my rig a little to see whether there are some things that are causing the model to be very different from the actual results.
Feeding the deer - they were smelly, dirty and very greedy
A warning sign…
I attended a lecture at Bristol University run by Water Aid for World Water Day. There were two speakers, the first from Aquatest, a research group supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They are developing a water testing device that can simplify the detection of pathogens in water. The second speaker was from a new charity called Wellboring, looking at boring wells in Kenya. I have to say I was a little more sceptical about this charity, their intentions were perfect, but their delivery was to just give a community water, there didn't seem to be the sustainability there - it seemed an almost imposed solution - however, I'm sure that they will be successful and they will help many many people and I'll be forced to eat my sceptical words!
A resting lion
The seals jumping for food
I've also had a bit of busy few weeks at church. I produced another talent show in the middle of March in the church under the guidance of several people. We had a very good evening, with some fantastic singers such as Alice Lovell and for once the Scouts provided entertainment rather than just embarrassed laughing. I even did a short poem recital (Roald Dahl's The Pig) as I wanted to get up on stage - my vanity appearing again. We raised a fantastic £170 for the church, and now are going to get ready for the pantomime… We also had the Easter Messy Church, which we had 86 people at. At our messy church, my job is to do the cooking along with Hannah and Becky - I'm not really trusted around children due to my slight potty mouth - and we cooked 15 pizzas in a small oven. We had a panic when all the pizzas stuck to their pans and we couldn't get them out without making most of them disintegrate. So, for an hour we slowly pulled pizza away from pans, and after a stirling effort we finally managed to serve up all the pizza to the hungry punters with very respectable looking food. This was also the first time that we've manage to have all the food eaten - must have a been good!
The hedge maze (we managed to get through it in under 30 mins!)
For those who don't know me, I love to make cakes. For my birthday this year, Hannah made me three most amazing cakes. I spent the days after my birthday feeling sick from cake but somehow not being able to stop myself from eating them. So, for Hannah's birthday the week after mine, I had to try and match hers. I spent an evening baking cakes, and the next day I carved and iced her cake. I had made a Lego-man. I don't think it was as good as last year's effort - the hungry caterpillar cake - but it went down well.
My fantastic birthday cakes!
Legoman cake
Last year's effort - The Hungry Caterpillar
After all that cake, I'm rather more round and weighing a few more kilos than I probably should be. So the next month I'm going to be going on a bit of a healthy eating kick, in an effort to lose some of the cake weight and try and save a bit of money as well - this year's trip to Nepal is not too far away now!
First things, I'm going to Sweden in May! Woo! My paper was accepted - I was a little bit concerned that they wouldn't agree with my changes and responses, but no further feedback.
At the beginning of March was the EWB Conference in the Royal Academy of Enginnering, London. The conference was split into 2 sections, education and research. I wasn't really initially interested in the education part, I didn't care that much about it. However, I had to attend one of the talks and so went to one called "I don't want to change light-bulbs; I want to change the world!", mainly because I liked the title. However, it was very good. It talked about problem based learning, using complex questions that have no correct answer. I thought it was a very interesting way to learn, very similar to how you work. I presented in the energy panel, which also featured work from Solar, biogas, biofuel briquettes and smokeless stoves. It was great to see a broad spectrum of energy research, but all trying for the same goal. The other panel I attended was the industry panel, mainly to listen to Jon Leary and listen to the presentation about the desert fridge. The papers for them can be found here and here. It was a great day, I managed to meet a lot of people to discuss some ideas, although didn't get as much feedback on my project as I'd hoped. I stayed in London for the Saturday after the conference, Hannah came up and we went to Tower Bridge Exhibition - a fantastic exploration about how Tower Bridge works - before heading to the West End to watch The Lion King - The Musical, which was absolutely amazing.
Tower Bridge Old Engine Room
Along with Katie Cresswell-Maynard from EWB, we gave a talk to the IMechE, Bristol and Bath branch. Katie talked about the need for engineers to help in global warming and poverty alleviation. Some of the statistics really made me think. Over 1.5 billion people (around 20% of the world's population) without proper sanitation. 900 million people without access to drinking water. Then over the next 20 years our requirement for water, food and electricity are going to be increasing with population growth. It's a big issue. I think the thing that got me the most that 1.5 million people a year are dying from preventable diseases. That to me is just wrong. After all those sobering statistics, I stood up and talked about my project, the technology I'm looking at and the benefits. I think the thing that brings it home to me is some of the interviews that we carried out in Nepal with PEEDA. There, people were so grateful that they had received electricity, it enabled them to work at night-time, not have to pay for kerosine and have clean and safe lighting as well as TVs and radios. (Video taken from PEEDA's website.)
I think I gave a good talk, and I met a lot people who wanted to chat about the project and has given me some more motivation about going forward.
I've been progressing with the testing. It's been quite slow initially, trying to understand how the rig can be operated. First I looked at how to capture all the water exiting the turbine, so the water didn't go over the floor. After some searching, I found a huge tank in the back of the Hydrolab, which could sit the turbine rig in. Any splashing water would then be captured by the tank, and pumped out by the submersible pump.
The rig in the large tank
The next task was to test the jet to ensure it was stable and a constant diameter. As can be seen in the photo below, the jet looked good across all heads.
The jet stability
With the jet stable, I did a check to see how much the head could be varied. From my specification, the head needed to be able to vary between 0.5m and 3.5m head. The head is adjusted by using two valves in the pipe run, one controlling the main head, then the second takes off any excess water, reducing the pressure. The flow is measured to calculate the head at the nozzle using velocity head. We could vary the head down to 1.0m, but below that, the flow rate became too low and the flow meter was unable to measure it. However, it was decided that this was not a real problem. We increased the head to maximum to see what it would be. However, as the static pressure increased behind the nozzle, this became too much for it and blew the nozzle off the pipe. Then followed a scene similar to those in slapstick films where I attempted to hold on to a flailing hose which was intent on covering the Hydrolab with water. After that I fixed the nozzle in with glue and put two grub screws in to fix it onto the pipe, which would increase the strength of the joint. I also resolved to only push it as far as 3.5m head!
Once this was done, the the testing began. Being a aero/mechanical engineer, I have never really used oscilloscopes before, so it took me a while, and a lot of help (thanks Niall and Gyorgy) to learn how to use it properly. However, once this was overcome, then I managed to get some readings for torque and speed out of the turbine. I was able to do a couple of runs at a constant head, varying the speed of the turbine as well, by varying the electrical load on it. From this I've got some initial curves which I need to now compare with my model.
The modelling has been more tricky than I had initially imagined. The flow inside the Turgo turbine is highly complex, with a jet impinging on the Turgo cups. There are several different forces at play, 3D flow effects and factors due to the shape of the cups and angle which the jet impacts it. All of which means that the next step from a simple 2D model is highly complex, and would normally include some sort of CFD. However, I have no intention of doing any CFD as this would not allow the model to be simply run for lots of different cases easily. Also, the CFD model would be severely complex as well. So, I've been reading up on how Pelton wheels are modelled to see if I can use any of the techniques there to match with the Turgo.
Outside of the PhD, I have been doing some more work with HTC. In the last week of February they did a evening of songs from the shows, films and TV. There was minimal stage management work to do on this occasion, so instead I found myself sat behind the sound desk. There, I had to balance the sound of the show between the backing tracks and the singers. I had never done anything like it before and found it very difficult to do, however, by the end of the run I found myself getting better. The show was a great success and we managed to have a full house most nights.
At the beginning of March I was very tired. I decided that I needed a short break, and so spent a week in Scotland visiting some friends and my cousin. I went to Aviemore, where a friend works in an outdoors shop. There I went for a bit of a wander around and climbed a hill behind the town. From Aviemore, I drove over the Cairngorms, by the slightly dubious ski centre at Lecht, and headed to the granite city of Aberdeen to stay with my cousin Linda, and her husband Dave. I had a brilliant time with them, just relaxing, reading, watching films and talking. I was amazed at the length of Aberdeen's beach, which stretched several miles up the coast. Hundreds of miles out to sea from Aberdeen are the oil and gas rigs, making Aberdeen Europe's self proclaimed 'energy capital'. Although you can't see the rigs themselves, you do know they are there. Very regularly, helicopters fly overhead ferrying workers to and from the rigs. In the bay by Aberdeen several supply ships are sat, waiting for their next delivery. It was quite fun just to sit and watch the world go by.
A view from the hill behind Aviemore
In Aberdeen, I also met a friend of mine from my undergraduate days, Keith. Keith was a engineer on the helicopters, doing the maintenance. As he did shift work, I was lucky enough to see him for a couple of days and we headed into the mountains again to have a look at the Victorian trail - around 60 miles from Aberdeen is Balmoral, the Queen's summer residence. As we headed deeper into the Cairngorms, the weather closed in around us, and then the snow came. It was fun to be driving in the snow again (or to be exact, driven in the snow), but I wasn't looking forward to making my way back to Aviemore again in it. So, when the time came to head back, I went the long way round, avoiding all possible snow related problems. Phew. One relieved Sam.
The snow falling as we head along the Victorian Trail up the river Dee
The next month sees me doing more testing and hopefully getting further along the road with my model. I need to start working on the next phase of the project as well soon, looking at the electrical side of things. Hopefully that can start more in earnest soon too!
SAM
p.s. This is a picture of Aviemore station, which has always been somewhere I've wanted to go. When we were little, we used to play a game called The Great Game of Britain, where you would get sent to Aviemore station and could normally only leave if you rolled a six...
For the last month I have been working in our Hydrolab installing the turbine and the associated pipework. I'm not the best at installing things, but I'm quite pleased with the pipe run. I've fitted the system onto the downpipe from a tank 40ft (12.5m) above the lab. The plan of the pipe is in the drawing below:
Plan for pipe installation
I made a series of brackets with Unistrut and Dexion metal frames to support the pipe. I cut the pipe and assembled it dry to make sure that everything fitted before gluing everything together. The PVC pipe glue stinks. It is the most awful smell, even in the large space of the Hydrolab. After a day of gluing pipes together I had a really bad headache, but everything fitted as planned. There were a couple of problems where the glue dried before I could get the pipe to fit snuggly into the fittings, but I managed to adjust some of the brackets to allow for the slight changes in length.
The next step was to silicon up the joints to make them watertight, before checking the pipework for leaks by putting water through the system. There are several valves between my pipe run and the 40ft tank supply. One of them had been shut for a long time, and would not open. Myself and the lab technician, Jack, spent 2 days soaking the valve in WD40, heating it up and hitting it with a large hammer. Finally it cracked open and we were able to pressurise the pipework. There were just 4 small leaks in the pipe, which I was quite impressed with.
Pipework
After plugging the leaks and allowing the silicon to dry off we did another leak check, and the leaks were pretty much sealed - just a couple of small drops of water were coming out. So, now was the moment of truth. Connecting everything together to see if the turbine would work. The last year has really come down to this, the choice of turbine and design of the rig - what would happen if it didn't work. I hadn't really thought about that. I connected up the turbine to the flexible pipe from the end of the pipe run, switched on the oscilloscope to look at the output from the torque transducer and current sensor (used to measure the speed of rotation of the turbine) and then slowly cracked open the control valve.
With a rushing of water, the pipes slowly filled with water and the nozzle pressurised. Finally the nozzle exploded into life, directing water at the turbine, and the turbine began to spin. Across on the oscilloscope a trace was visible from the current and the torque. The excess water fell into the little water tank and then was pumped away by a little submersible pump. The only real problem was that the tank obviously wasn't up to the task that I required of it, water splashed out and all over the Hydrolab floor. But it worked! A video and a couple of photos of the first run can be seen below.
Turbine running with the water splashing
Oscilloscope trace (top torque, lower - current)
Video of first run
So now, the testing begins, and trying to match the model and test results…
Last year I displayed a poster at the EWB research conference. This year, I was asked to present a paper on the Energy Panel about my work so far. This will be in the beginning of March at the Royal Academy of Engineering, London. So I spent a couple of days writing a paper to describe the work I've been doing. I'm looking forward to the conference, to get feedback on the work I've done so far and see what people think about the direction I've gone it, especially as it will be the first time I'm presented my work to people outside the university.
I received comments on the WREC paper I submitted before Christmas. Most of the comments were insignificant, and we got a great score on the paper. This was fantastic, and after a couple of small alterations to the paper, I resubmitted it again. I should hear back about the paper in the middle of February, whether it's been accepted or not.
It's going to be a fun couple of months, finally getting some testing to do!
Christmas time is never boring. Especially when it snows. I had quite a lot of travelling planned, off home to Cornwall, then to Leeds to see my sister before coming back to Cornwall with her for Christmas Day. We had arranged a Williamson family moot, so I flew to Northern Ireland on Boxing Day for that. Finally I would come back to Bristol on New Years Eve for a party. This was going to be fun. (And no, I wasn't going to calculate my carbon footprint as that was going to be huge.)
Waiting at the station for the train to Cornwall, the snow was falling as hard as snow could. All flights to Northern Ireland had been cancelled due to the heavy snow in the province. The train was frozen and when I finally managed to struggle on it was packed with everyone heading away for the christmas break. Maybe not the best day to travel.
The train in Bristol Temple Meads
I spent a couple of days at home, where we celebrated my Dad's 60th birthday. In our town we have a turkey auction every year. I had been there with my Mum a couple of times, watching her bid on a turkey and normally returning with several. This year, Mum was working so I was left to buy the turkey. I was determined to return with only one instead of Mum's normal rafter. I have never been in an auction before. It was tense, watching all the people getting over-excited bidding on turkeys. It was fun to see who was there because they hadn't bought a turkey yet and were desperate to get one, no matter what the price, and those who were just there to get a good deal. I fell into the second category as we had another turkey already if we didn't manage to get one. When the price was about right I bid. A couple of times I didn't get it, the price went too high, but after about an hour of being very careful I ended up with 2 10lb turkeys for around £30. When I got home my Dad just laughed. My aim of the single turkey just didn't happen...
Preparing the turkey from the auction for Christmas Dinner
After a couple of days at home I left again, heading up to Leeds to meet my sister. The train to Leeds was even more crowded than that back from Bristol. There was pandemonium throughout the 7 hour journey, and at most points during the trip up I had an elbow or backside in my face. Always nice. The drive back from Leeds with Mary was interesting, the snow started falling very hard as we past Birmingham and I wondered how far we'd make it down. But with Mary's careful driving and a lot of luck we made it back for dinner.
Christmas at home is always fun. My parents, children at heart still, give my sisters and I some of the same presents as we used to get when we were little. We always spend some time on Christmas morning sitting on their bed and finding out what Father Christmas has brought for us in our stockings. This year was no disappointment, I found a lot of chocolate (yum), some trivia cards, the standard facecloth, toothbrush and toothpaste and the ubiquitous small orange in the toe of the stocking. I absolutely love Christmas dinner, and didn't have any breakfast so that I would be able to eat lots of it. After church, I helped cook the dinner of turkey, gammon and all the trimmings before devouring it with the ferocity such a feast deserved.
After peeling myself out of the dining room chair we watched the Queen's speech before opening our presents - a Williamson family tradition. This was always annoying when I was small, having to wait until mid-afternoon to open any presents, but now I find it more fun as it spreads the day out nicely.
I left for Northern Ireland on Boxing Day, and after a couple of attempts to land in Belfast, we eventually made it down. Northern Ireland was suffering from its worst winter in many years. In many places people had been snowed in for over a week. The temperature on Christmas Day had dropped to a jaw droopingly cold -19. However, as I arrived, the snow started to melt. For our Williamson family moot we decided that we would make gingerbread men. For a bit of fun we decorated them as each of us.
Williamson gingerbread men
(For those that are wondering, the HT is a Hill toe and WN is Williamson nose, two genetic traits in our family and I have both of them!) We met up, played games, ate far too much again and then in all too short a time I had to leave again. I returned to Bristol and saw in the New Year there with friends and fireworks which was great fun.
Over the Christmas break, WREC had given me 3 papers to review as well. When i had a look over them I was impressed by the work that these researchers had done, it was all very novel and of great use. I felt that my own paper may not stand up to the similar levels of research, but I hoped that it would still be accepted. I had never reviewed papers before, so it took me a long time to give useful and constructive comments about the papers to help improve them. Whether I did or not, I don't know, but it was an interesting exercise.
So, Happy New Year to one and all! I'm looking forward to a most exciting year!
