Need a little time to wake up

Three conditions are desirable for creating a conductive environment for research: to stay away from day-to-day problems, to have a flexible schedule, and not to be worried about money. However, these three same conditions are also ideal to promote leisure.

It's been almost a week since I returned home and I am now at a stage where I just wanna chill and don't do anything else. At this point it is prevailing to resume activities to prevent my holidays being extended.

I used these days to retrace known places and walk and hear the streets, see people's faces, how they endure the unfairness of life with charm, distilling a pride that cannot be taken from them, reminding me that I am not more or less of what I behold here, of what I remember I ever was.

QWERTZ vs QWERTY

Nobody ever estimated the time lost in first getting used to the german Qwertz keyboard and later in getting used back to Qwerty again. That's re-search in one of its purest and shallowest exhibitions.

My own master, my own disciple

There comes a point after classes, as literary review takes shape, when I realize that the world is ok, and that all major problems are somehow being taken care of; it is an amazing and liberating feeling per se if it weren't for the fact that I'm being paid and recognized for coming up with an innovative and effective way to solve a high-priority problem in the world.

At this point I also feel that I'm of no use at all: not for my previous co-workers whom I haven't talked to for a while; not for my current colleagues who seem to be too busy or at least too dazed by the burden of their ongoing research; not for my family, which seems to have managed to go on without my presence for a long time now.

However, about three weeks before the date of my flight back home, and after a meeting for the first time ever with my supervisor (more like a Nathan Jones - Phil Martin arm wrestling than a meeting), I started to see my topic elucidate in a clearer way. It was for sure the time pressure kicking in.