Can You Please Spell Gabbana?

With a little under two weeks left in the Antipodes, I look at my blog and I can just feel future Devon looking back, raising his fist in the air and yelling, “CURSES!” I suspect he wants some more self-reflection so that he can look back and see what he learned from this experience… and hopefully he has learned to not refer to himself in third person because that is just the worst.

So let’s do a bit of a commitment to blogging for the next ‘little under two weeks.’ I will be sharing pictures of our trip to Hobbiton as soon as my dear sister has finished editing them, but until then it looks like you’re just going to have to stare at letters and numbers and punctuation marks.

First off: work. I’m actually not allowed to talk about my specific work at the Royal Society right now so la la la there’s that paragraph. A little more detail: I will be able to talk about it when what I am working on becomes public knowledge. Not that anyone who reads this is affected by the knowledge of what I am doing… but best to keep it off the internet nonetheless.

I can talk about my work at the Science Media Centre, where, if you remember, I am a little less of a policy intern and more of an… administrative assistant?

Yeah. I mean, my work does relate to policy… What I do is I go through research profiles of universities and institutions around New Zealand and input the researchers into this huge database (the most comprehensive database of scientific experts in New Zealand, I might mention) so that they can be easily accessed when either the Science Media Centre or someone contacting the Science Media Centre needs some information.

SO one day I input a couple dental/fluoride experts into the database. Next thing you know… BAM. A regional council has decided to STOP PUTTING FLUORIDE INTO THE PUBLIC DRINKING WATER. News. Of. The. Century. And what happens next? The staff at the Science Media Centre look up fluoride experts to contact about this situation. And we all know how the media influences legislation (no sarcasm, it does, deal with it), so I helped. Somehow…

But the task does get a little monotonous and sometimes I feel like my learning level has reached its maximum. I do read all about the research that is going on in New Zealand, but that’s only stimulating for so long. But, a job is a job and it still feels satisfying to know that you are helping out, making things easier (and letting the people with more experience spend their time on more important tasks).

With my wine in hand (yes I’ve turned into a middle-aged woman) I can sit back and look at the hand-drawn calendar on the back of the door and see that my time at work is coming to an end. And while my work has looked a little bit more like a straight line as opposed to a jagged, inclining line (like last summer), I still feel accomplished. I’ll probably write another work-based post when work is actually finished because I can imagine that it bores you to read about it… and onto a couple more light-hearted, fun posts.