[EDIT : Photos added to the post; meant to do it awhile ago but ahhhh, you know me...]

ok, so the weather has improved a little. after our mini-rant, the skies decided to co-operate, and the weather cleared just enough to allow for some off-station travel. not much has happened since we last said hello, but i'll just write it down in any case for future reminiscing.



we had a scotch-tasting night 2 saturdays ago - it was surprisingly a lot more enjoyable than i'd expected. i've never really been much of a scotch/whisky drinker, apart from the occasional glass with my dad or when i'm out slutting it up (HAHA ok no, i never slut up) in some KL club. even then, i wasn't pretending to be some high-brow whisky afficianado, sipping single malts straight (or, perhaps with a little bit of water); most of my scotch/whisky encounters have been of the Johnny Walker Black + Coke/sweetened green tea varieties, instant mood-uppers for when you want to get drunk. it also didn't help that i've come to associate the taste and smell of whisky/scotch with bad memories of hugging the porcelain bowl.



so, when i was strong-armed into saturday night's scotch tasting, i was, and rightly so, apprehensive. when the 12 different bottles of scotch were unveiled, i felt even more hopeless about my situation. but as the bottles did their rounds, and i sampled each type with tiny sips, it was actually not too bad. every bottle had its own flavour, distinct of each other, and it didn't burn its way down my throat with each sip. i guess i came away from that night with a new appreciation for scotch and have definitely found myself a few labels to sample with when i get home.



over last weekend, i also managed to do a short trip to Platcha hut. there were 4 of us on the trip: myself, a chef, an electrician and the lidar scientist. it was an easy guilt-free trip filled with bludgery and sitting around doing nothing except eating cheese and cold cuts, plus drinking mulled wine. i love trips like that where i'm not pressured into doing anything.


The interior of Platcha Hut, my favourite hut in the whole of the Vestfolds.

the wind crapped out around Platcha hut though, which was understandable and something we had already predicted on the way out. it was blowing snow at 20-30 knots, which made peeing in the tide-cracks on the sea-ice a bit tricky. i can say that that was the closest i had ever come to a full Antarctic experience (more about that in time to come). we saw two emperor penguins on the way back to station. for the first one, everyone got out of the hagg to take photographs of it, even though it was cold and snow was still blowing around at ~25 knots. when we came across the second penguin, everyone got jaded and said, 'yea alright, we've seen one already let's keep going' HAHA we're such assholes sometimes.


 Sastrugi, or snow drifts, all the way back to station.

and then YESTERDAY, another emperor penguin rocked up on station ya allah is this turning into like some sort of emperor penguin invasion now??? everyone walked down onto the sea ice and surrounded the poor thing - i think it got a bit traumatised because we formed a semi-circle around it, and it probably thought that it was toast and was about to be the Davis dinner.


One lone Emperor penguin between Tryne Fjord and Long Fjord. Life as an Emperor must be really lonely sometimes.

it's a great feeling when you can afford to start feeling blase about emperor penguins.