screw mathematical models. flowers is where it's at.

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this is a google map picture of where i live (quaintly annotated A on the map). it's pretty well-located with respect to uni (uwa) and my lab (at the hospital in the figure, which we affectionately refer to as q-e-2 for queen elizabeth II, or charlies).

anyway, you'll notice that to get to lab, which is close to the roundabout where hampden rd meets monash ave, there's quite a few routes i can use, passing through the residential area. including the main roads, there's only a certain number of paths i can take to get to qeII without backtracking (i'll even post the mathematical model once i figure out how to draw and put formulas on the blog. oh, you guys are in for such a treat!).

as mathsy and empirical as i would have wanted it to be (not that much, i'm not that huge of a nerd. calm it down), i find myself taking pretty much the same route every day, because of some (non-mathematical) factors that my model doesn't account for:



at this corner, there's a hedge of flowers (whose name i'm still trying to find out) that smell sickly sweet of honey and bark. it's somewhat inebriating and sometimes i find myself standing there for a few minutes just taking in the smell, and watching the bees. pending i'm not late for a lecture or lab. the picture from google maps is old, i guess, and the hedge looks somewhat lacking from what it is right now during the early spring. maybe i'll grab a photo if i can remember to carry my camera with me sometime.



along this road, i sometimes see a cat. it's either a black cat, or a striped one, kind of like a tiger but not so orange, and with more stripes. both heed my beck and call, which is super awesome. one day i was playing around with the tiger-cat and some girl was passing by (unnoticed to me) and saw me making cat noises while scratching the cat's tummy. as i realised she was watching, she chuckled and smiled to me. was pretty embarassing, but i guess it could have been worse. both the cats have owners (from their collars) but i have yet to place where they live. if anyone of you has cats, you'll be familiar with how they roam and come back only when they need food. lulz.


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see the empty sky in this picture? that was probably 20 years ago. now there's a huge ass tree there. it's some kind of conifer and i really like the leaves. i don't think you can find this tree outside australia, and just having them around reminds me of my childhood days in sydney, walking through a park on the way home from st. matreville high school. no, it wasn't a high school, it's just called st. matreville high.

post is getting long, will continue our journey, soon!