Summer

How time flies! All my lessons have ended, and I am now doing my dissertation. Well, in case you think that it is now time for me to sip lemonade on the beach, think again. My MSc project is to describe the Be File System as Formal Specifications. If you have forgotten what that is, here is a re-cap. So, time to start squeezing brain juice again.

The nice thing about summer is the long daylight hours. The photo on the right is taken at 9.15pm "at night". It's still so bright, isn't it? With the sun setting so late, there are still a few hours of daylight to enjoy after work. The only hiccup is that most shops here close at about 5.30pm, latest 6pm. It feels quite weird to walk around the city centre after work, when it is still so bright, but the shops are all closed and the street deserted.

The late sunset also makes it difficult for the Astro club's activities. We now meet at 10.30pm, but even at this hour, the sky is still too bright to see anything but the brightest stars. It is quite a quagmire actually. To see the stars, we need clear skies, but when the sky is clear, the sunlight is able to linger over the horizon even after it has set. Last week, we waited until 11.30pm, but still could not see much.

Most of the gooslings have grown up, and the campus is now quite crowded with geese..... and geese droppings. The geese are quite big birds, so their droppings are not in small piles either. Well, one can't always have the best of everything.

Of course it is not just the animals who take advantage of the warm weather and long sunlight hours. The other thing I like about summer are the wild flowers, which seems able to grow anywhere grass can. It makes me want to lie on the grass among the flowers, just what the locals like to do when the sun is shining.... until I remember the geese droppings :) Well, I'll make do with enjoying the flowers from afar.

For the duck lovers, here is something to cheer about after the events of The Sinister Duck. Some ducklings did manage to survive, and have now grown quite big. Their mother ducks have kept them well hidden, and they have emerged now that they are not so vulnerable. The picture below shows a mother duck casting a watchful eye over her almost grown up ducklings. These ducks are certainly better mothers than the ones I describe previously. Firstly, they are bigger in size, and presumably able to fight off marauding drakes. Also, the father drakes are around to help look after the young ones. Some of them are even brave enough to quack at me when I venture too close. Well done, ducks!