Monday...

... was a very good day!

The Department here has (finally!) managed to organise some space for me (as at most universities, in my experience, space is at a premium). It's a very nice office, overlooking the courtyard formed by the U-shaped building. I'm sharing it with another researcher from another research group.

On Monday night, I joined a church "small group" here in Davis. I had been missing going to some form of mid-week fellowship meeting and so I contacted the local "Covenant" church (Bayside Church, where I go on the weekends in Rocklin is a Covenant church) about their small groups. The group is a very nice bunch of people (from 20- to 80-something, with a mix of singles and married people). The group is studying the book of Galatians at the moment. The church itself is called University Covenant Church, and looks like a great church. Hopefully, I will get to visit one weekend!

Another good weekend...

Well, it was back off to Rocklin for the weekend again. I've been getting lifts on Fridays and Mondays with a friend of Colin and Janet's, Jon, who lives a block away from them and works at UC Davis, commuting daily. He was helping cater the breakfast for a fund-raising golfing tournament the next day so we stopped off at a bulk goods store on the way back to do some shopping. Three trolleys-full of breakfast ingredients later the back of the car (a large American SUV) was loaded!

Colin and Janet had a movie "date" on the Friday evening (part of the church's married-couples' ministry) so Erin and I went off to get a DVD. We ended up using "RedBox" - a very high-tech DVD vending machine (this one was situated at a nearby service/gas station). You simply select your movie using a touch panel, swipe your credit card and a slot spits out a DVD! Once you've watched the movie, you simply return to the machine and put it back in the slot. We rented The Bee Movie, which I had seen before, but the Hobsons hadn't. That is great fun and family-friendly - well worth watching if you haven't seen it already. While we were out, Erin mentioned this place called the Cheesecake Factory. We got a delicious Lemon Raspberry Cream cheesecake. They're a little expensive on a South African credit card, but it was pay-day and a rather nice treat!

The rest of the weekend was relatively uneventful. The weather was beautiful and we swam on Sunday afternoon. That may be the last swim of the year as the pool has been getting rather cooler as we move into Fall (sic!). There are rumours that there may even be some rain before the end of this week (there hasn't been one drop since I arrived in July - the rainfall is very seasonal).

Jon, my lift to and from Davis, works odd hours, as he manages a roofing maintenance team and they start work in the middle of the night to take advantage of the cooler conditions. That means getting up really early on Monday mornings to get back to Davis. However, this week I got to lie-in as we only left at 5:30am (normally 5:15am)!

Caching update

Well, my puzzle-solving skills are clearly not too bad, as I found the second geocache referred to below very easily. To be fair, the puzzle did involve some conversions from hexadecimal number notation, which is kind of trivial for a computer scientist!

That's the cemetery cleared of geocaches. I'll need to start wandering further afield!

Caching and photos

Well, I spent some time looking at the local geocaches today, and discovered that there are two in the cemetery behind the house. One was straightforward, so I walked around and did it at lunchtime, while also collecting the clues for the second (a puzzle cache). I've subsequently solved the puzzle (I hope!) so will need to go back to complete that one. However, I did take some more photos (see below).

The photos include the wild turkeys that roam around the area (along with guinea fowl), the view of our house from the cemetery, and what Californian grass looks like in its natural state (almost everywhere you go there are sprinkler systems automatically inundating every patch of grass with water - which strikes me as bizarre when the state is facing fairly severe water shortages if there are not good rains this winter!).

The Market Again

Or Picnic in the Park.

This time I remembered my camera, so there is some photographic evidence. You can see the market, the crowd enjoying themselves on the lawn and the band (not as good as last week's band, I must say) below.

I could get used to Wednesday evenings at the market (however, it closes for the winter in a few weeks time, so I am taking advantage while the sun is shining). I grabbed some supper again. I went American this week and had a delicious hot dog, followed by a magnificent sticky bun (kind of like a Chelsea bun, but topped with a toffee/nut mixture) while I listened to the band playing. After that I bought some more of the delicious strawberries that I had got last week and some very nice looking tomatoes (will see how they work in the ratatouille I have planned for supper tomorrow).

All in all, another great evening at the local farmers' market!

Fall Convocation

This morning I attended the "Fall Convocation" — a formal start to the new academic year here, addressed by the Chancellor (equivalent to a South African Vice Chancellor, as far as I can tell — i.e. the executive head of the university). The convocation was held in the main auditorium of the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts — a very grand 1800-seat theatre on campus. The proceedings were opened and closed by the university's orchestra. It was an interesting event as UC Davis is entering its centennial year, commemorating its origins as an agricultural college in 1908 (the students are still referred to as "Aggies" — c.f. Rhodents!). The Chancellor spoke very well, referring to the history of the university, and was clearly quite emotional as it is his last year before he retires. I really enjoyed his passion and his very evident care for the people who make up this (and any other) university. There were five other speakers who represented a good cross-section of the university and who reflected on their experiences and the past 100 years of institutional history under the theme of "A Century of Doing What Matters".

Of course, there is another wierd symmetry for me here too, after Rhodes celebrated its centenary just a few years ago (in 2004), as Dave Woods was nearing the end of his tenure as Vice Chancellor.

Where to find me

In the interests of keeping up the visual interest levels in the blog, I've hacked together a Google map of some of the main spots of interest. The blue marker is where I live and the yellow marker is the Comp Sci Department at UC Davis. The green marker is where Colin and Janet live in Rocklin, and the pink marker is Bayside church.

You can zoom in, pan around, etc. on the small map below, or click on the link below the map to open up Google maps and have a good look at it all.


View Larger Map

Dental care

Well, after a great weekend in Rocklin it was back to Davis this morning to face an appointment with the dentist :-(. I had chipped a tooth last week and made an appointment to see a dentist whose practice is not far from where I am staying here. He recommended a crown to repair the tooth, but at a cost of $1300 for the crown procedure, I settled for the cheaper option of a filling - a great bargain at only $331! He did a very thorough job and took almost an hour over the whole process, which was great (the only thing that really felt any pain was my wallet!). Needless to say, the SA Rand is apparently in a slump today following Thabo Mbeki's resignation on the weekend.

Thriving musicians...

Last night I attended an awesome concert at Colin and Janet's church Bayside (and my church for the next year too, I guess!). The concert was part of the Thriving Musician Summit conference being held at the church, and featured some of the speakers at the conference. The concert kicked off with two of the worship leaders/song writers from Hillsongs in Australia. As we sing a lot of the Hillsongs songs in church back home, it was great to hear them from "the source" as it were, and that was a great opening to the concert, getting everyone into a worshipful frame of mind (although the sound quality was not great for this part of the concert).

That segment was followed by someone I hadn't even heard of previously: Phil Wickham. Well he was amazing! He started off a little loud (some heavy rock), but then moved into some more mellow songs, but all of his songs were marked some beautifully poetic lyrics (without being cheesy), and he has an incredible vocal range and style. I'm going to be looking out for his CDs.

Last, but not least, was Lincoln Brewster, the worship leader at Bayside, who was launching his new CD, This is the Day. He was battling with a dry, scratchy throat, but put on a great, energetic performance, and sang some of his old favourites as well as some songs from the new CD.

All in all a great evening of amazing worship.

More photos on the web.

Of bikes, and ducks and cycling tracks...

This afternoon I set off for my first real ride around Davis (trips to campus and the shops don't really count!). I set off to do a loop around the town. There is an excellent layout of bike lanes on most roads, which makes it quite safe and easy, although there are more robots (or should I say traffic lights!) than I would like to see. I had a great ride and was starting to head back home, when I came across a road marking indicating part of the Davis Bicycle Loop. On the spur of the moment I decided to turn off and take that route, as I had a vague recollection that it would lead me in the right direction. Well, it did... eventually!

The Bike Loop takes one on a lovely scenic route through the town, avoiding the roads and sticking to the excellent network of cycle tracks. They have really gone to a lot of trouble with that, providing dedicated bridges, underpasses and overpasses and an incredible network of paths. Some of the bridges over the two main highways are really impressive (although my dislike for heights was severely tested over one of them!).

The path took me along the Putah Creek through the UC Davis Arboretum. Putah Creek is UCD's answer to Cotch Creek, only with more water, but even grungier (hard to believe, but it's true!). The water can't be too grungy, because the creek is heavily populated with ducks and geese, as the accompanying photo (taken a few weeks ago) shows. And yes, the water is that green!

Anyway, I had a great ride, thoroughly enjoying the ducks, geese and 30km of great bike trails.

Life in a small university town...

One of the reasons that I picked UC Davis for this sabbatical trip was the similarity between Davis and Grahamstown. While there are probably more differences than similarities in fact, there are enough of the latter to make me fell quite at home a lot of the time.

This evening I went along to the "picnic in the Park at the local farmers' market. It's worth clicking on the link, because it really was like it looks in the picture there: a live band playing some mellow music, good, cheap food on sale from various stalls, families picnicking, children playing (and dancing to the music), a few students chilling out, etc. I mooched around some of the stalls and bought some of the fresh produce on offer (some delicious grapes and strawberries - all of which could be sampled before purchasing), then treated myself to a very nice, filling Indian meal (chicken curry with rice and various other side dishes) while I listened to the band play. The band was from Sacramento and played a lovely selection of old 60s and early 70s music (they appeared to be big fans of the Credence Clearwater genre of music!). All in all it was a lovely evening out in mellow, relaxed surroundings.

The academic year here starts next week, so I expect to see a rather sudden increase in the general busyness levels in the town - reminiscent of Grahamstown in February. There has already been an upturn in the number of students around, but with a much larger population than Rhodes (30,000+ compared to 6,000) I guess it's going to get a whole lot busier next week!

Time for some photos...

I've been meaning to add some visual interest, by putting some photos on the blog, so here goes. The first is of my bedroom - note the laptop and, by inference, the hard work being conducted! Then there is the view of the graveyard, and lastly the view of the house from the street.

You can sort of make out the rather less-than-exciting view through the blinds (see the previous blog entry below)!

I've moved!

Well, this was the week. I finally took the plunge and moved into my new "digs" in Davis on Wednesday. I'd moved most of my stuff down on Monday (coincidentally, Colin and Janet were buying a car from someone there, so were going through that evening), so I just caught the train down on Wednesday with my last few bits and pieces. It's been a productive couple of days of finding the nearest grocery stores (a few options within reasonable walking distance) and getting some of the administrative formalities at the University completed. On Thursday I attended an "orientation" session for visiting academics, which was very informative and helpful. Then, on Friday, I managed to sort out some other admin issues like getting a UC Davis staff ID card and signing up for email and network access on campus. I should be meeting with the researcher I am working with for the year on Monday, so the "holiday" part of my leave is starting to draw to a close.

I came back to Rocklin for the weekend on Friday evening, and helped Colin and Janet with their garage sale this morning. The sale is actually a huge neighbourhood effort, sponsored by one of the local estate agents. There were over 250 households participating in the area, and "our" street won the prize for the best rate of participation (gift vouchers for some restaurant in the area). One of the neighbours was selling a small office/typist chair for $5, which is perfect for my room back in Davis (one of the few things I still needed to get), so it was a good day's buying and selling here.

I've attached a photo of the view from my "desk" at Colin and Janet's (I may have irritated my sister slightly by describing it to her on the phone the other day!). The view from my desk in Davis is a lot less interesting - mainly consisting of a pathway and the neighbour's house.

People are good...

Well, it's been a busy week. It started with the Labor (sic!) Day weekend. On the Saturday, Colin and Janet had some friends around from Petaluma (the town near San Francisco where they used to live). It turns out that their son is on a "gap year", campaigning for Barak Obama and other things before going to university next September, so they have his double bed and desk that they were going to put into storage. That "problem" was soon solved, and we borrowed a trailer from some other friends of C&J here and collected the bed and desk on Monday (the public holiday). We dropped the furniture off in Davis on the way back (Davis is on the highway between Sac and SF, so it was very convenient). Also on the way back, we stopped off at Ikea (an AMAZING scandinavian furniture chain - I fell in love with their stuff years ago in the UK - lovely quality and style, with very reasonable prices) in Sacramento where I bought some bedding.

We went to church on Saturday evening again, as the Petaluma friends wanted to hear the guest speaker: a young Australian man, Nick Vujicic, who was born with no arms and no legs. He had an amazing story to tell of his life, and how God had helped him to deal with the frustration of his disability.

On Monday evening we went out for supper to a very nice Italian restaurant to celebrate the boys' birthday on Tuesday (hard to believe that they're 17 now!).

Getting back to furniture, C&J have also lent me an old chest of drawers that they had been given years ago, and which Colin had in his closet here, but wasn't really using. That didn't have a top on it, so we bought a piece of wood, which Colin sliced, diced and routed with his impressive collection of power tools - the top is now the best part of the whole thing! I took that and the Ikea bedding through to Davis on Tuesday when I had to see the letting agent to put in my application form, so my room is almost ready for occupation. I'll probably move down to Davis sometime this coming week and start getting settled in down there.

It's been a good week for the Hobsons too. As well as Bryn and Jared's birthday on Tuesday, Janet had a job interview on Wednesday and was offered the job. It is perfect for her, part-time close to home and building on her skills in web design. She starts there in mid-September.