Yesterday was the first full day of a liquid-ocean view from my donga. The sea ice blew away the day before - the edge shaved away gradually and then the entire mass broke into big floes and was swept away. There seem to be more penguins on the beach (which seems more like a beach now, with little lapping ripples) now that the ice has gone. There are still huge floes rafted up onto the shore; it's interesting because you can look underneath some of the ones that have tilted up against boulders and see the honeycomb patterns made underneath as the floes rot. Two people in the physics building had cameras set up to take time-lapse footage of the process - perhaps when the movies are compiled I'll be able to post them here.

We still haven't left for Zhong Shan - I suspect that will occur in a few hours. They asked us whether we would mind being away for New Year's but I think it will be a great adventure. I heard this morning that the Russian resupply vessel has just visited Progress II (the Russian base near ZS) so they are now fully restocked with ciggies and vodka and may be either be very raucous or very passed out. The Russian planes arrived on the 28th - three days ago - so there will also probably be some guys there who have flown out of Vostok.

In a few days I will hopefully be able to report on whether all this stuff is frivolous stereotyping and heresay or whether any of it is true.

I looked up a Russian phrasebook on the net last night. It told me that the most handy phrases I would need as a tourist ncluded "hello", "goodbye", "how are you?", "good", "my passport has been stolen", "please call an ambulance immediately", and "help! I need the police!". WHAT KIND OF ANARCHY AWAITS ME AT PROGRESS II??

I'm sorry that I come across jaded, stereotyped and tired in these posts. It might be a reaction against all the early posts which included a lot of "woo!"s and "stunningly beautiful"s and so forth, for which I got panned out a lot by the indoor-tan nerds on slashdot. But my Dad told me last night he's got a map of Davis on the fridge that he uses to work out what all the buildings in the webcam are, and he and Mum were both excited that they saw all the sea ice disappear via webcam. That was nice.