Monday 28 February

It made me smile today when I read on Facebook that friends in Indonesia were finding it 'cold' there.  Sitting just below the equator it never gets lower than 29C during the day and if you're lucky down to 26C at the dead of night.  Actually I've been really cold myself today but I noticed it was only 3C this afternoon.  Brrr.

It was cold at school as well.  The radiator wasn't on in the conference room for the new students, so everyone felt chilly.  Had a staff meeting as well to discuss the panel results for the students' assignments and exams.  We then went on to discuss students - the less said the better.

I thought my essay looked ok but then when I printed out my bibliography a lot of the sources were more than 5 years old so when I got home I started doing searches on the linguistics and language behaviour abstract database.  Apparently I'm getting familiar with 'Boolean operators' (AND, OR, NOT) but the searches turned up loads of articles in journals that the university doesn't subscribe to.  To read those articles, it costs £20 per go, so I just looked at the abstracts.  

Watched the Kate Humble programme 'Spices' which we'd taped.  It was on nutmeg and cloves in Indonesia.  There are 17,000 islands that make up the country and she travelled to the 2 where these spices come from.  She interacted so well with the people and it was beautifully done.  I couldn't help smiling as I watched - they'd captured the friendliness and gentleness of the people so well.