Busy...

After a busy weekend (work-party in Tilburg-repairing my brothers computer-having dinner at my parents') a busy week has started. A few minutes ago I received the DS2019 form from OHSU. This means I just have to fill out a few more forms stating that I am truly not a terrorist and that the main purpose of me visiting the USA has nothing to do with either drugs or terrorism, but that I am a (mostly) harmless, hard working student and that I will return home after six months and not pursue a long illegal stay in the country they all love and hate so dearly :P Of course this statement is once again going to cost me a some money and time but I have good hopes the US Embassy will not give me a hard time.

I don't think I will manage to gather all necessary information required by the embassy today though, since the pile of paper right next to me does not present me with the idea that I will have any time left when I finish it.. First of all I have to finish a discussion on a Nature Neuroscience Review paper, I have to present next wednesday afternoon. I have all the information I need but I still need to put it in a nice presentation and make my arguments match my opinion :)

Then there's Genesis (a neural simulation program); the amount of physics and maths required to work with it seems to slow me down and I don't like it. I hope to finish chapter 7 (of 20) today and gain some speed in acquiring the programming skills needed to work on the intended model of Purkinje Cells and Interneurons.

If that's not enough, there is a (roughly 8 cm high) pile of experiment proposal that need to be reviewed in a meeting wednesday morning and I am supposed to have read them carefully by then...

My master program coordinators thought it would be nice to organize correction, to make the students organize) a symposium and make it a requirement for all students to either present orally or hand in a poster describing their current research. Since I will start the real experiments in may in the USA, I will not have a lot to talk about in april when the symposium is being held. Therefore I decide to put together a nice poster descibing some of the background and the main problems concerning the integration of optokinetics and vestibular information and plasticity mechanism in the cerebellum. I don't think I will manage to start working on the poster anything earlier than thursday, but we will see...

Altoghether I will not be bored this week... Thank god for Kaldi watching his goats in Ethiopia around 600-800 AD, and the monk Chadely for trying to make a drink out of the enrgizing berries discovered by Kaldi and mix them with boiling water. Last but not least my thanks goes out to the fellow that discovered that roasting the berries before mixing them with the boiling water greatly improved the taste! Coffee will keep me going...