new zealand index

01 – jan 19: new zealand trip, flight there
02 – jan 20: due north
03 – jan 21: island in the sun
04 – jan 22: everything in this garden is lovely
05 – jan 23: rotorua – the fumes are chocking me
06 – jan 24: rotorua to national park with stop at thermal wonderland
07 – jan 25: whole day at national park
08 – jan 26: national park to wellington
09 – jan 27: trip to the south island
10 – jan 28: kaikoura to geraldine – long drives and changing cars
11 – jan 29: geraldine to twizel, the day hike that killed us
12 – jan 30: sunrise over mountains (twizel to all day bay)
13 – jan 31: all day bay to dunedin, penguinds and internet
14 – feb 1: dunedin to fjordland
15 – feb 2: milford sound sea kayaking
16 – feb 3: full of doubtful sounds
17 – feb 4: fjords to queenstown
18 – feb 5: queenstown to wanaka
19 – feb 6: whole day in wanaka
20 – feb 7: wanaka to haast
21 – feb 8: haast to frans joseph
22 – feb 9: at frans joseph
23 – feb 10: frans joseph to hokitika
24 – feb 11: hokitika to arthur’s pass
25 – feb 12: arthur’s pass to christchurch (day at christchurch)
26 – feb 13: flight back

reading titles of papers

this is one of those “if i never had to work what would i do (beside photography and travel)” things.

BBC posted an article on Romantic love ‘lasts just a year’ citing a research article. i love these kinds of news as they lead to a fantastic amount of facianting research.

so, again, upon reading such an article i jet to e-resources of u of t and try to find the original. unfortunately news articles cite their sources very liberally (i.e. mention the author and journal, but not paper title or anything like that), thus it involves some looking up.

the moment i open any given journal on scholar’s portal (biggest collection of online research journals and articles at u of t), i start to drool and wish i could read alll of them. i still haven’t found the original of the BBC article, but here is a skimming from today’s “casual research”; the articles i’d love to read just to gain the knowledge:

  • The role of the amygdala in human fear: Automatic detection of threat
  • Stress hormones in health and illness: The roles of work and gender
  • Coping with critical life events and lack of control—the exertion of control
  • The effect of a low dose of alcohol on allopregnanolone serum concentrations across the menstrual cycle in women with severe premenstrual syndrome and controls
  • Weight loss strategies, stress, and cognitive function: Supervised versus unsupervised dieting
  • Prenatal stress and children’s cortisol reaction to the first day of school
  • these are from Psychoneuroendocrinology journal.

    i couldn’t find the article there (grr, and google scholar ain’t helping either), so i looked up “romantic love” in the u of t scholar’s portal. results (ohmygosh! hesi i think you’ll like this) – there is a journal called Psychology and Marketing .

    articles from that:

  • Romantic love and sex: Their relationship and impacts on ad attitudes
  • Direct evidence of ending-digit drop-off in price information processing
  • On-line product presentation: Effects on mood, perceived risk, and purchase intention
  • The dark side of discounts: An inaction inertia perspective on the post-promotion dip
  • A cognitive and behavioral hierarchical decision-making model of college students’ alcohol consumption
  • Memory for advertising and information content: Comparing the printed page to the computer screen
  • The interaction of retail density and music tempo: Effects on shopper responses
  • A cross-cultural exploration of attitudes toward product expiration dates
  • the The Journal of Comparative Neurology Volume: 493, Issue: 1, 5 December 2005, pp. 58 – 62 has an article titled Romantic love: An fMRI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice

    i want to read them all, collect them all. and this is just from a 15-20 minute casual browsal/search of just one of the many (at least 10 major, 50 minor) online collections of journals, all searchable.

    and each article has references, which lead to more facianting stuff, and and and this is just the latest research (all of these are at most 6 months old – nearly nothing, given how my friend published a linguistics article on a book written in 1973!)

    i wish i could be one of those people who writes news articles based on these journals. that’d be FREAKIN’ SWEET!

    P.S. Tickets to Australia bought. Tickets to New Zealand bought (open-jaw – flying into Auckland and leaving from Christchurch). Residence secured (the mixed orange roof thing around a big tree). All that’s left is visa (easy), and figuring out the pleasantries of what to do in NZ, and what and how to pack. i foresee a lot of pleasant shopping for bags for me.

    update: boingboing to the rescue! they posted a link to the original paper i was looking for

    what do you mean its a week later?

    apparently even as a self centered blog this entirely blows, cause i don’t care enough to write about myself. aren’t you happy!

    philosophy essay handed in. yay for developing thinking.

    databases is done. yay for tim’s brilliance.

    saturday – harry potter and tim’s party.

    sunday – study! w00t for starting 4 days earlier than usual.

    i went to my mom’s work’s new year party today (they always celebrate it a month early – must be out of consideration for those of us who have birthdays on dec 30th!). it was fantastically decorated (40’s black and pink theme – stunning.), and the food was awesome.

    cooking wise – meh, nothing lately. no time. reheating food.

    clothes wise – i was sick, and then writing papers, and then sick some more. same pair of jeans and sneakers for the past week. yeah, i’m changing the shirts, but even the sweater is the same dark grey turtleneck from netherlands.
    tonight i’m going spiffy. driving downtown in black(some kind of)top and my favourite green skirt.

    coffeecup

    cuba red walkway

    thoughts on travel

    motorcycle diaries 1
    “What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land. “

    Miner’s Wife: Are you two looking for work? Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: No, we aren’t looking for work.
    Miner’s Wife: No?… Then why are you traveling?
    Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: We travel just to travel.
    Miner’s Wife: Bless you… Blessed be your travels.

    moss




    moss

    Originally uploaded by olya.

    from camping

    how freaking cool is THAT? i can blog from flickr! and then my photos are stored there and stuff.

    except then this is not REALLY a *PHOTO*blog but a photoBLOG. which is blah.

    flickr is nice, ‘cept someone was stealin’ my stuff. i’m in process of taking harsh actions against those who stole my work.