Back home update..

Well this promises to become a long post. that's what you get from waiting to long... So what happened between the last post and this moment? Let me think. The Saturday after the Blazer's game we went to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry). If Max could move to this place i am sure he wouldn't hesitate a second. It's a do-museum in which some basics of predominatly physics (magnetism, pressure, etc) are explained with little experiments and play-things. At night I packed and Sunday morning insanely early I caught the plane to Washington DC.

Upon arrival there was a taxi waiting to drop me off at the hotel. On the way we passed the Pentagon and Arlington national cemetery, I decided I should try to visit those if I had the time. The hotel was nice, although the room was really small for me and my three colleagues. Ah well, after some arguments we finally had four beds so all of us could sleep. There was no way we would be able to find something else anyway with 34,000 neuroscientists occupying all hotels in DC. I was to late to register that day so I met with my colleagues for dinner in downtown DC. The next days were spend both at the conference and at the many memorials and monuments in DC. I saw many research posters, and listened to a fair amount of talks. I also visited the white house, pentagon, capitol, Arlington, the Vietnam war-, Korean war-, Lincoln- and jefferson memorials and the Washington monument. Pictures at my photoblog.


Well, wednesday afternoon I was on a plane back to the Netherlands. Arriving in Amterdam at 7am I was happy to see my mom, brother and girlfriend that all managed to get up early enough to pick me up. My brother still lives with my parents which means that there are three cars in front of that house. I had 6-months-luggage, so they choose to pick the smallest car to pick me up... After some trouble we managed to get everything and everyone in and I was on my way home. The first couple of daysI did not seem affected by a jetlag but later I couldn't sleep at night or get up in the morning. It's almost back to normal now. We moved all my stuff back to my room in Utrecht on Sunday and after the inital "if-it's-in-a-closet-it's-organized" attitude, I am now really organized and everything is where it should be. I freshly installed my computersystem, and a second time over because the first time I was attacked by some worm that wouldn't be removed with any of the 6 programs I tried, but now everything seems to work just fine. I must say the Netherlands are pretty cold and wet. Tuesday in Washington I had dinner with some other dutchies outside and it was warm enough to just wear a T-shirt. Here the power-lines are collapsing as a result of snow and ice.....

Last friday we had a party at our house for a number of unimportant reasons. It was fun to see some people again and hang out with people of more or less the same age and situation of life. I had a great time in the USA, but at the institute there were hardly people my age. Most were much older. Sunday I wrote my first column for my philosophy, art and culture class. It deals with the god-shaped hole between the world that we observe (science) and the world of which we are part (art). I noticed that my way of thinking is pretty much biased towards a scientific approach. I really like art and everything, it's just that on a day to day basis I deal with science way more. I hope this course will learn me how to balance this and broaden my general knowledge about art, culture and philosophy. Today I dropped by my old work to arrange when I am starting work again. I can start tomorrow night and we planned all the way till new year. It was fun seeing my old colleagues again, they were enthusiastic about me returning to the company. I have not told them that it will probably only be for a couple of months, since I already have a fulltime job at uni for when I have graduated from my masters program. I guess they will understand when I tell them, but in the meanwhile I'll have to pay the rent and avoid the risk of having no job.

I also started writing the official application for my masters thesis. I am confident this will offer no problems with the exam committee so I plan to start working on it any day now. If everything goes according to my plans I will have fullfilled all graduation requirement in early february. The official graduation dates are unfortunately enough on january 27th (can't make that) and april 27th . Ah well, I can start my PhD job in february anyway, it's only a nice trick of uni to squeeze some more tuition money out of poor students.

To conclude:
I'm back, I'm busy and I am on schedule to graduate....