Tired Friday
It was a strange sort of day yesterday.
Early in the morning, we went to the International Airport to pick up VR, expecting that her flight had landed at 02:10AM. I’d had every intention of going to bed early and setting the alarm to get up around 1AM to get showered and ready to go, but for some reason I didn’t think about going to bed until it was midnight and there wasn’t much point really – I always feel like crap after cat naps. We got to the airport at around 2:30AM and ended up waiting for just under two hours until three or four planes’ worth of passengers (who were all coming out in seemingly no particular order) had come through the Arrival gates. We asked a customs officer if there was anyone left to come – there wasn’t. We tried asking an Emirates hostie if there was any way to check if our friend had been on the plane, but she said she couldn’t give out such information. We’d been checking our mobiles in case VR had tried to call us, but there had been no calls and no messages left. We tried ringing VR’s mobile but got the automated message that the phone was out of a service area. So what to do? We went home. We thought perhaps we’d gotten our wires crossed somehow – we hoped if there was some sort of problem that she’d ring us so we’d know when to pick her up. As I said to Jac, although it would be a pain in the bum to have to go to the airport again so early in the morning, I’d be happy as long as a dumb mistake had been made, like reading flight details wrong, rather than that something life-threatening or tragic had occurred.
When we got home it was close to 5AM and I made the mistake of checking my email before going to bed, thus discovering the first nasty comment left by you-know-who. Although I was tired, I was compelled to write a response. As I sat there trying to compose a coherent response, comments from readers started coming in. By the time I had posted my response and read readers’ comments, it was close to 6:30AM. Oooooops. Seeing as I’d woken up at 6AM the day before, I really needed sleep. I fed the hungry and slightly confused cats their breakfast and tumbled into bed.
When I woke up again it was 10:30AM, and Jac was at work (I remember she did say good-bye, but I was in dreamland at the time – thanks for your concerns and best wishes for her recovery – she was ok to go to work, but said her tummy still felt queasy and a little sore for much of the day. Thankfully, the vomiting had ceased). I hadn’t had enough sleep really, but I had too much stuff to do. I got up, made myself a cuppa and got cracking on the thesis. I don’t think I mentioned that my most recent meeting my supervisor went very well. She’s made a list of suggestions regarding things I need to fix/edit/add/re-write. She said it’s up to me whether I want to follow all the suggestions, but we went through them together in detail and most of them make perfect sense, so I have that list of things to work through. When I have completed the amendments/corrections, I will basically have my final draft, ready for printing. And when that has been printed and bound, it shall be submitted for examination. I’m currently fixing the formatting of the whole thing (Introduction, six chapters, Conclusion, an Appendix and Bibliography). A PhD thesis is supposed to be anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000 words long. I have a feeling my thesis is on the 100,000 side of the scale. If you have ever wondered what 100,000 words looks like, here you go, the fruit of almost three years’ labour:
I’ll be lugging that baby around for the rest of the year and throughout January – my supervisor’s annotations are on the hard copy in the file; I edit the soft copy either on the laptop or the desktop pc. I’m actually hoping to have the whole thing completed and ready for submission by the end of January/early February. The official submission date is the 16th of February, but it would be just so cool to finish before then.
Anyway, in addition to formatting thesis and reading blog comments, I had a very simple lunch. I had a rice craving but was too lazy and tired to do much cooking. So I just microwaved some rice and then opened a tin of Ayam brand sardines in tomato sauce and emptied the contents (four sardines in tomato sauce) into a dish and zapped them in the microwave until they were nice and hot. I then ate the sardines with the freshly cooked rice. I guess it was not the most nutritionally balanced meal, but it was tasty and did the trick.
Around 2PM VR rang (just as I was nodding off at my desk, actually!) and said there had been a mix-up with the flight details she’d been given and thus gave us – long story short, she’s arriving early tomorrow morning, and so we’ll be heading back to the airport again to pick her up. Fingers crossed!
For dinner last night, Jac decided to cook some good old comfort food – one of our eternal favourites, minchee. She served the minchee with rice and bok choy, which she very simply prepared: she blanched the bok choy and some finely sliced garlic for around 30-40 seconds, then served it up with soy sauce and sesame oil drizzled over the top, and some freshly cracked black pepper.
I ate my dinner while watching the cheesy, so bad but so entertaining Deep Blue Sea on the telly.
It is so hot right now… the forecast maximum today was 36 degrees Celcius (conversion to degrees Fahrenheit is here); our home is not air-conditioned and it currently feels much, much hotter than 36 here. It’s supposed to be a little cooler tomorrow, which is good – we’re off to a barbie at MK’s house. Which reminds me, I have some baking to do. I might wait until it’s just a bit cooler before I start though.