Out and About with Grandma

Shopping trips...

Adventures at the playground...

The princess napping afterwards...

Eating out...

...but of course, Jacynth is only interested in crawling around and playing with other kids!

Watch Jacynth grow #7

In just two short months, Jacynth will be turning ONE!

Weight: 8 kgs 462 gsm

Length: 70.5 cm

(measured by child health nurse)

She's quite an explorer now...

Exploring around the new house...

Spending time at her favourite corner with daddy... 

Exploring her new found skills... 

Thank God that a few days before she succeeded in climbing up onto the sofa, she learned to get down from the bed with her legs first... 

Clapping to songs now...

Walking! :O

Her way of saying "Hello"...

Acting cute! She can also now do "gong xi, gong xi" and wave "goodbye"... ;)

Exploring her toys especially the ones that Karen had kindly lent us... 

She grew another 3 more teeth in the past week... and has a total of 7 now. And she loves gnawing on biscuits so when she's busy doing that, it's the best time for Agnes to get some things done around the house! :)

Leaving Istanbul and Back in Perth...

The day finally arrived for Kevin to leave Istanbul and head back to Perth to be reunited with Agnes and Jacynth... beginning with a shuttle ride to the Ataturk International Airport...

 Last chance for some photos...

 ... as the bus crossed over the Galata bridge...

Popeye burgers for lunch!

A four hour transit in Singapore's Changi airport after a 10 hour flight...

 Then it was another 5 hours before Kevin would land at the Perth airport, where he took a cab back home to be greeted by Agnes, Jacynth and Kevin's mum! As expected, Jacynth kept herself busy by helping to 'unpack'...

We're glad to be reunited again! :)

Conference in Istanbul

The main reason for Kevin's little trip to Istanbul is to attend the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) General Assembly and Scientific Symposium, and that's what he did throughout the week. Here's Kevin and his dorm-mates Luis and and Fikih posing in front of the Lutfi Kirdar Convention Centre in Istanbul where the conference was held...

The three of them again, this time together with some of the others at the Young Scientist Party...

One of the general lectures in the main auditorium...

Fikih's presentation on the attenuation of waves in rain...

The radio astronomers probably got the best venue for their talks. It appeared to be the only room with tables, so everyone could bring out their laptops to do some work and check e-mails while the talks were going on!

The room has got a nice view too!

In fact, the convention centre is situated on some sort of hill, providing a nice view of the surrounding areas and the Bosphorus. The only downside was the 2km walk uphill that had to be traversed every morning in the heat and humidity of summer. 

Luis' poster...

One of Kevin's research collaborators Dave Jauncey presenting the Grote Reber award to Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the discoverer of pulsars (and whose PhD supervisor controversially won the Nobel prize for her discovery while she was overlooked).

Jocelyn Bell then gave a very inspiring talk about how she serendipitously discovered the pulsars, with this slide showing the initial nickname given to them: LGM (for little green men)...

Kevin gave his own presentation on the last day of the conference...