Under the old Myrtle tree

Well I have moved now and thankfully what the other landlords lacked in the fixing of major functions they made up for in being very reasonable and friendly in letting me move out without paying the rent I expected to so the whole thing was rather stress free in the end and I'm not properly set up in the new place and making it a bit more homely. I also notice from a brief look back to my last post to check that I don't repeat myself, that I used the turn of phrase from there altogether too much, so I shall endeavour to be more adventurous with my locution henceforth. The stress free nature for my move cannot be compared with the ridiculous amount of health and safety paperwork that I have to compile in order to perform the simplest of reactions with most advice suggesting that a degree of forgery and neglect is the easiest way to have reactions approved for reasonable working hours. Still my first synthesis (that of the tetraphenylcyclopentadienone roughly by this synthetic pathway) was a relative success, despite the best efforts of Leo, the guy showing me what to do to paste the inside of the fume hood with the product. Still, despite this impressive dark purple eruption the reaction proceeded fine and as I'm going to use a fair amount of it with it being a precursor to the ligand I'm investigation I made quite a lot of it so it was a minor loss in the end.

Had my first steak in Australia which was unfortunately overcooked, not quite what I expected from such a nation but I'm sure there will be a fair few to come. I do miss curries though, they don't manage it quite as well as home. Speaking of homely foods, despite not really having them at home I had a full roast on Sunday. I went back into town to join friends from the hostel and we decided to buy chicken and vegetables to make a roast. It was very well stocked and rather tasty, despite the unimpressive kitchen in which we made it. The eating was however one of the least interesting things about this meal however as the buying of the vegetables at the covered market below a shopping centre on the outskirts of Chinatown. Despite the calls of most of the sellers of $1 in a distinctly Asian twang, nothing seemed to be $1 with wide variations in prices of the simplest things. Not that you could tell what things costed until you bagged it up and paid for it - far too many people pushing by being loud, and that was supposed to be it when it was quiet. Also attended a house part at a rather impressive "suite", it would appear this apartment block is too posh for flats... Mind you it did have a pool and garden area on the roof, not that we visited either, so perhaps it can justify such pretension...

Anyway, I have written seven postcards and need to write up tomorrows experiment in my lab book so I shall call this post to an end. Hope you're all enjoying Britain, it's starting to get warm here now. Nice and sunny for my lunches now.