Complete Sicily pics and good news!

Having some trouble with the flickr photo website at present, so only a handful of the Sicily pics are available. Aiming to fix this asap. Watch this space

I passed all 3 of my modules for the semester, so there was no need for the resit premium on my travel insurance after all :) Thanks to some relatively decent marks on my coursework assignments, my overall grades even scraped their way into 2:1 territory, though none of my first year grades will actually count towards my final degree mark.. phew!

I got back from Sicily yesterday and what with a four hour dash across Sicily to get to Palermo on Thursday and the supreme drag of queuing for an hour in crowded, hot corridors at Stansted airport on Friday just to get from the plane to the immigration desks (what is wrong with that airport??!), I am still a little shattered. Also, while I am very sad for the poor, drenched people of Sheffield, and other drowned cities and towns in the North of England that have face severe flooding in the last days, I cannot pretend I am unhappy to see the rain outside my window here in York Rd after a week of 40+ C temperatures and a near miss when our farm might have burnt down when a nearby neighbour's stubble-burning went out of control and we had the helicopters flying over with water for about 24hrs trying to control the blaze. Without air conditioning in the apartment and the additional 'roasting' of the nearby fire, it was possibly one of the most uncomfortable nights of my life! I can only be grateful the wind did not blow the smoke in our direction, forcing us to close our doors and windows!

Other than the intense, brain-melting heat and the pesky mosquitoes (it was an organic farm we were staying on after all!), Sicily was fantastic. Even if you don't count majestic Mount Etna, the scenery as a whole is quite breathtaking, with rocky mountains with cities perched on top rearing up out of the earth everywhere you look, and the sea almost as stunning a blue as you get on the Cote d'Azur. The food was just as delicious as I had expected. Our hostess at the farm brought us lots of home-made biscotti and other baked delights such as pastries and ricotta and chocolate bread. I'm not a coffee drinker myself, but coffee my friend made herself every morning smelt so good I almost converted! The Gelato, of course, was divine and something to which we treated ourselves as often as we could, and my first taste of swordfish steak was superb.

Another aspect of Sicily that totally lived up to my expectations was the driving!!! I already touched on it in my last posting (though mainly with regard to getting used to the funny auto/manual hybrid car we had) and though I warrant that some of my impressions may have stemmed from my being a foreigner ignorant of local traffic regulations, I swear to you, which ever way I tried to work out the rules for their roundabouts and other junctions, there seemed to be no consistent system. Only one rule seemed to work across the whole island.. "Who dares wins!" After a week of driving there, I swear I'll never be nervous driving in central London again! Nor on the German Autobahn either (The Sicilian autostrada are also two-lane, like the German ones).

Anyway, I must go an get ready for my choir concert this evening, so I will leave you with the photos and wish you a great weekend! Ciao :)

Sicily photos

A quick hello from Taormina!

It was a long drive across the island from Palermo airport on Friday, but we finally made it (and before sundown at that!) to the apartment on a small organic citrus fruit farm in the foothills of Mt Etna along the Catania coast. This was no small achievement, given Sicilian driving etiquette and the challenge of working out how to use one of these modern automatic cars that randomly seem to switch to manual when you least need them to (i.e. when you need to accelerate away from danger.. a common occurence on this island!). Both the manual in the glove compartment and the messages that appear on the dashboard along with a piercing alarm bell whenever the car gets all uppity about some perceived driver error, are in Italian!! Not one of my languages... and certainly not helpful when said driver is used to a car that does what it is told, not the other way around.. :( Two days in.. I think (hope?!) I have worked out all the crafty tricks the car likes to play on unsuspecting foreigners - phew!

Upsides are: Sicily is stunning. The weather is hot hot hot! The food is unbelievably good and the farmer's wife bakes us divine Italian cakes and breads for breakfast every morning.. bliss :)


Mel at the Greek Theatre in Taormina


Sea life at Acque Grande, 20 mins scramble/hike from the apartment


Acque Grande (we are going to buy jelly shoes so we can paddle without being stung by the above creatures!)

Quick hello and some pics from Switzerland before I dash off to Sicily

Vaudois village of Saint Saphorin


Mel and Mum - grinning even BEFORE we went in for some wine tasting :)


Picturesque placemat.. the real view really IS that stunning!

How did I ever 'survive' these marathon student holidays??

Even though it seems an obvious fact of life that, as a student, I would be able to enjoy long summer holidays again, I'm finding myself almost overwhelmed at the endlessness of this one.. and it's only just started! Of course I'm NOT complaining, and it certainly won't be endless. Semester A will inevitably creep up on me before long! This time though, I'm determined to be better prepared and, like a good swot, I've already got a bunch of the textbooks out of the library have even started reading them. My current literary poison of choice at present is "An Introduction to Chemistry for Biology Students", which will hopefully help dull the pain in the back of my head when I tackle molecular biology and biochemistry next term!

The full list of modules for next semester is as follows:

1. Clinical Practice 1 and The Therapeutic Relationship (in which Mel gets to don a white coat and start concocting evil-tasting brews for unsuspecting patients at the University Clinic)
2. Phytochemistry & Applied Biochemistry
3. Systemic Anatomy, Physiology and Clinical Embryology

It's going to be challenging to say the least, but I am particularly looking forward to the clinical training component, as it will help take some of the more torturous science out of the dry context of the textbook into real life.. and make the brain-ache worth-while! :)

It's not going to be all work and no play though.. I have LOTS of travel planned. Starting tomorrow (aherm) with a totally frivolous (but thanks to budget airlines not overly expensive!) 'haute couture' trip to Mum's tailor in Switzerland to pick up a divine dress and jacket she has been creating for me from some lovely material I brought back from a trip to Delhi several years ago and never did anything with.

Then hot on the heels of that little flourish of extravagance, I am off to the East coast of Sicily with a girlfriend of mine on Friday for a week of R&R on an organic farm to recover from all the fashion excitement ;) I'll be flying back in time to perform in our summer concert (details to follow) on 30th June at All Saints Church (nr. All Saints DLR, London), ready to launch myself into another month of student hedonism.. More on the big summer trip to North America soon. I think I've probably sickened you all enough for one posting!

I'll leave you with the result of a fit of creativity that came over me earlier this week. A pressed flower and washi (Japanese paper) collage.. Have a good week. M xx

Desperately seeking..

an able bodied man! This was the gist of an email I found myself typing early last week to a guy I'd never met. No.. I haven't started internet dating (yet..), but was responding to a light-hearted decree sent down from a dear friend of mine who threw the classiest ceilidh I've ever attended in Belgravia last Saturday evening. She and her fellow hostess-with-the-mostest had suddenly discovered that their guest list was predominantly female (of the unattached kind) and that more men were needed to make up the numbers in the dancing. So in addition to the condition of wearing some tartan, all women were now required to show up with a bloke on their arm to get in!!

This was a challenge indeed.. London is full of guys, not as many guys as girls, so the statistics show, but still. There is - or should be - no shortage! However - perhaps it's indicative of the 'age' of life I am in - most of my male friends (at least those that would be gumptious enough for some Scottish reeling!) are already married or attached. So if ever there was a time for some initiative, this was it! I started putting out some feelers amongst my female friends to see if they could source me a ceilidh-friendly, unattached bloke. I got two leads and, trying not to sound too much like Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction", wrote them both emails asking if they would consider attending with me... but as the days went by and I got no response from either of them, I began to get paranoid and kept checking in the mirror to see if I had suddenly morphed into said 'bunny-boiler' with oversized shoulder pads and a criminal 80's perm! Thankfully I hadn't, but it was hard to rid myself of a certain sense of unease..

Then finally last Wednesday I got an email from one of them, with a plausible explanation for his radio-silence. He had just got back from his holiday in Morocco and though he had a prior engagement on the Saturday afternoon, he felt sure he could make it to Belgravia for the evening. Hurrah! It pays to go out on a limb once in a while :)

Oh.. and before you ask, there is NO gossip to report! :) Only an amusing incident when I went up and greeted the guy I thought was my blind date for the evening (the only photo I had was less than helpful due to a pair of big sunglasses!).. only who turned out to be someone else's! Oops :) Thankfully his girlfriend was not the kind to take me outside and beat me to a pulp for the offence, and my own dance partner showed up shortly afterwards. We all had a fabulous time at the ceilidh and I am glad to say that the blisters on my little toes are healing nicely :)

Have a great week M xx

I can see clearly now..

the rain has gone :)


So on Saturday afternoon, the rain cloud finally shifted aside to let some blue sky in!


Mel with Mum on the shore of Lake Geneva


A splash of colour - selection of teas from a speciality shop in Vevey

I think there are some mountains out there

beyond the rain clouds..?? I am currently wearing the same clothes I wore in NZ winter last year.. What's wrong with this picture??


Lake Geneva (minus the usual Alpine backdrop!)


Swiss democracy - yet another referendum.

In this case, the 'Non' camp want to save the local castle from being sold for a song into the destructive clutches of developers, who will presumably knock most of it down and replace it with some modern horror (who knows?). The 'Non' option will cost the council a huge amount in restoration costs. I took a photograph of the 'Oui' camp poster, ironically because it was the better design!

Thanks to a timely open day, we had a unique opportunity to look around inside the unfortunate castle today, which currently houses various artists and other assorted people with exquisite taste in interior design. I suspect which ever way the ruling goes, these poor guys will find themselves looking for a new home before long!


View of Vevey Quay from inside Chateau de L'Aile