World Cup progress

So with a grand total of 5 teams to support in four sweeps (Slovenia, Denmark, Argentina, Chile and France) I'm currently sitting on:

Slovenia - currently on top of Group C with their win over Algeria (sorry 17catherines and French PostDoc!) but have only played one game.

Denmark - currently on the bottom of Group E having lost to the Dutch, but two games in hand.

Argentina - sitting comfortably on top of Group B, particularly after last night's 3-1 shellacking of the second top team, South Korea. (And yes, I'm aware that it's a much better scoreline than Germany/Australia. Don't mention the war, OK?) One group game to go means they're unlikely to be knocked out.

Chile - on top of Group H, but less comfortably so given they've only played one game so far.

France - struggling in third place having lost to Mexico and drawn with South Africa. Unless they manage to absolutely annihilate Uruguay it's not looking good for them.

So not a bad chance of me having no one to barrack for, particularly as I've pretty much given up hope of the Socceroos making it through - not that I had much hope to start with actually!

Incidentally I picked Germany to win the Cup 2-2 5-4 (penalties) against Brazil in one of the work sweeps (the non-money one). So at least I've gotten something out of them beating Australia rather convincingly!

30 days of television: Day 8

Day 08 - A show everyone should watch

Actually this one is difficult too, because tastes vary so wildly. So I'm going to nominate pretty much all David Attenborough's documentaries; Auschwitz the documentary; Ken Burn's The Civil War documentary and... well, I like documentaries OK? So I'd recommend watching and then arguing with them if needs be.

And on that note: An Inconvenient Truth which is not specifically a TV documentary but should probably be watched by all of us, especially for the purposes of debate.

handed in

I'm done for this semester, thank God.

I think last year's idea of write two essays in four days each and then leave the country was still the best move. Unfortunately it wasn't really feasible this year, which is a pity. I'm really finding myself craving sunlight at times, not least because my office has no windows. This time last year it was warm and there was lots and lots of light. *sigh*

Monday is the solstice, and after that the days get longer. Yay.

Melbourne has been continuing its traditional indecisiveness about which season it actually wants to be having right now. Wednesday through to today has just been absolutely bizarre - Wednesday morning was Bloody Freezing, with the actual measured temperature being 1.4oC and the perceived temperature -1.5oC when I arrived at training at 6am. That considerably lower perceived temperature would be due to the wind, which was coming directly off the Dandenong Ranges from what I could feel. It warmed up during the day to a perceived maximum of 13.5oC (measured 14.8oC) briefly at 2.30pm and then fell again just in time for me to go to training and freeze again despite the measured temperature being 15.1oC it felt like 9.9oC with the wind coming down from the snowfields again.

Thursday it decided that was all a bit too chilly actually and heated up to a balmy 13.6oC (8.6oC perceived) temperature at 6am. That was of course a bit too warm for this time of year, so a major storm came through and blacked out large chunks of Melbourne, mostly around Monash University which was built exactly where all the storms hit land coming in off the bay. (Why they didn't just chuck a reservoir there I've no idea.) We got all the rain but managed to miss the blackouts which was nice. Meanwhile the temperature plunged to 7.3oC measured; 2.6oC perceived. Naturally this occurred at the exact time I was supposed to be moving my car... I waited until the rain stopped but it was still freezing cold. After the storm front passed it warmed back up to 12.8oC measured but only reached 8.4oC perceived when the wind dropped briefly.

Today has been bright and sunny and is currently sitting on 11.7oC measured and 6.6oC perceived temperature. All this indecisiveness is making it very difficult to decide what to wear - especially as the engineers keep fiddling with the air conditioning/heating to try and make sure we're not either dying of heat exhaustion or huddled under a pile of lab coats trying to keep warm. Australia doesn't do insulation very well either, as Peter Garrett would know.