Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog
It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.
Currently reading
Reading progress update: I've read 131 out of 192 pages.
Monday - actually went to the conference! Found the campus fairly easily, got lost finding the actual conference building, but if I go to that street I'll find the main entrance to the place and if I just cut through that building from back to front, it's a short-cut to the right street...and also is the exact building where the conference is being held! Phew!
Registered, picked up the programme, wandered around to get the lay of the land ahead of giving my talk tomorrow, realised all my relevant stuff is Tues-Weds-Thurs and sneaked off to the zoo + aquarium! Spent 5 hrs there, saw mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, insects, fish, crustaceans and a bunch of things I don't know how to classify properly e.g. coral, sea anemones, sea urchins, jellyfish, starfish...
Perhaps most memorable were the elephants, great apes and other primates and rock-hopper penguins. The Indian elephants were using their trunks to throw dirt on their backs. The African bull elephant was using his trunk to spray muddy water on his belly, before just walking into the pool and kicking water everywhere...
The rock-hoppers were merrily diving in to the water, swimming around, getting out again... I noticed that "diving" was an overly dignified term for a jump followed by a belly-flop...also that when they do jump they flap their wings, which acheives absolutely nothing but seems to be a relic instinct from a time when their ancestors weren't completely flightless.
And the primates! One of the Sumatran orang-utans was seemingly as interested in watching the humans through the glass - nose pressed right against it - as the humans were to look at the orang-utan...The gibbon enclosure was the liveliest, including a not overly serious infant vs. adult female fight and a mating. (Took about three seconds.)
I went to the shop on the way out - they had a couple of great T-shirt/sweatshirt designs - women's style only! Grrrr! Mysterousy, I entered that shop with two Magical Creatures (Flagon and Speedy) and when I got back to the hotel there were nine! I'm not sure how that happened...I'll introduce them another time when I can post pics.
Which leads me to the fact that my camera battery ran out early in the zoo visit, which may be a blessing in diguise because there's no way I'd have seen the whole place if I'd been snapping away at the rate I started off at. But...no spare battery and no charger with me, either. Having noted a giant electronics store in the Europa Centre the previous day, I threw money at the problem and got two spares and a USB charger...
Tomorrow I have to work at least until lunch-time!
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