Mt John News

The snow has gone now and the weather alternates between the usual warm, clear skies and today's cold rain. I have been bathing for hours in the hot springs, eating the excellent local Japanese food, and walking with friends from Wanaka. We discussed my job options, for when I return from Australia in December. Cleaning is more appealing than waitressing, but in the sparsely populated countryside these jobs are less reliable.

One original suggestion was motivational speaker. Not bad, heh? Can you see me in a white shirt, grey suit and red tie? Earning big bucks? Yeah, right.

Meanwhile, back in the Mt John kitchen, a local astronomer assured me (entirely without prompting) that he appreciated the compelling evidence for large primordial black holes. The Milky Way black hole, which we have actually observed through the remarkable motion of orbiting objects, is far too massive to have evolved via standard theories of stellar and galactic evolution.