Dear Diary,
my trip to Israel is getting closer. I am really looking forward to it. We made a very rough plan of what to do and GS booked a rental car. We got a place to crash for the first night we arrive and will probably just kind of take it from there. Very exciting!
Dear Diary,
I just booked my flights to Israel. I’ll be leaving from Amsterdam on June 14 and will fly back on the 21st. I’ll be going with my buddy GS who’ll be visiting me in Groningen the week before. Really, really looking forward to exploring the country and hanging out with GS and my brother!
The return ticket was less than 300€. Cheaper than I expected!
Dear Diary,
tomorrow, I’ll go back to work. I still have about 40 e-mails to work through and answer and have five meetings tomorrow. It’ll be a busy day. Or week, for that matter.
But I am looking forward to getting back to work. I’ve been completely out of the loop for more than a week now. I’ve never done that before. It was pretty awesome. But it also made me miss the hectic days and all the projects I am working. I can’t wait to catch up with the guys and see what’s going on. I also have a couple of ideas of how to expand my network further.
I’ll try to work hard and get a lot of stuff done in the next two weeks. Then my good friend GP will come over from London for a week. He’ll have to work during the day as well so I’ll be able to get some work done during that week as well. Then GS will join us from the States and there’ll probably be less work. Then GS and I will be off to Israel for a week. Really looking forward to it all but am also a bit concerned by how much I have to do.
I’ll be fine, though. It’s just a matter of setting the right priorities and outsourcing as much work as possible.
Dear Diary,
last week was pretty busy. I needed to finish up a few things before I left for my vacation. I initially had very ambitious plans but then decided to scale them down and postpone a couple of things to when I am back. I would have needed to rush a lot of things and there were too many things that could have gone wrong. And without me being around to fix them, it’d actually have been more work when I am back.
I went to OHZ on Wednesday night to buy some sunscreen and organize a birthday present. We left for Sweden at 4:30 am on Thursday (Ascension Day). We took the ferry and the bridge and eventually made it all the way up to Ed. We were there are around 4 pm, I think.
The groundkeeper told us that it was still freezing the night before and we agreed to spend the first night on the campsite and leave the next morning. The first night was fucking cold. I woke up at around 5 am because I was cold. I couldn’t feel my toes and got up to make a fire. I also only packed my Trail Gloves. They are great because they are very light but they are also very thin and not water resistant. But when the sun came up, it started to get warmer and eventually, it was very, very nice.
They groundkeeper came back at around 8:30 and gave us the two canoes. We were five people and had food for 3 days, plus all our stuff. They fit perfectly in the two canoes. He just asked us whether we also have some experience (and said yes, a little) so he sent us off. He also gave us some life vests but we first just threw them in the boats and didn’t plan on wearing them. He advised us to wear them, though, because, in his words, “the water is 3 degrees. If you fall in, you have 2 minutes before you’re dead”. That’s what I call a convincing argument.
And he wasn’t kidding. The water was cold as fuck.
Other than the super cold water (apparently, the lake never really “warms up” – it’s too deep), the conditions were absolutely perfect. The first two nights were a bit cold (between 3 and 5 degrees) but it got better after that. The days were very sunny and super warm. One day we had 29 degrees. :o For most of the trip, there were no clouds in the sky and no wind at all. The water was like a mirror and we were surrounded by stunning scenery of rocks and forests. During the week, the birch tress started blooming, adding a lush bright green to the darker green of the conifers.
I spent the entire week outside. It was great. We were out paddling for about half the day. The rest was spent reading, gathering fire wood, preparing food, cleaning stuff, and doing laundry in ice-cold water. I slept in my hammock every night, looking at the stars and being woken by the early sun.
Overall, the trip was fantastic. We had a small group of pretty relaxed people. One of them has the tendency to over-plan things a little bit and she got slightly annoyed when things changed or we changed our minds. But it wasn’t too bad and didn’t ruin the mood.
We started our trip in Ed and then started paddling north on Stora Le up to Nössemark. There was a shop there and we asked where the next shop would be to make sure we have enough food. We were told that we’ll find a shop in Lennartsfors. We made camp on an island north of Lennartsfors on Monday and planned to take it easy on Tuesday. We started the day a bit late and arrived in Lennartsfors at around 1 pm. Our plan was to do some shopping and then paddle for another hour to make camp. But: there was no shop in Lennertsfors. The next one was in Gustavsfors. Or in a town about 20 km away. By car. A small panic broke out which was funny because we still had quite a bit of food. I don’t really mind going half a day (or even a day or two) without food so I didn’t really mind that much. We eventually talked to two older gentlemen to verify what we were told. They gave us some fresh water and told us that yes, we’ll have to go to Gustavsfors.
We left Lennartsfors at around 2:30 pm with a relentless 28 degree sun pounding down on us. After about 4 hours of pretty committed paddling we arrived in Gustavsfors. The shop was already closed, though, and wouldn’t open again until the next day at 9:30. So we paddled out of the bay again to make camp on a small island. We cooked the remaining rice and realized that we had enough food to prevent any of us from going to bed hungry.
We spent about 6.5 hours in the canoes that day which was by far the most. After that, we took it easy and had a short day. On the last day, we were originally planning to camp on an island about an hour from Bengtsfors (our final destination). That day, it was windy for the first time and we had to actually paddle through some waves. It made the sun feel a lot colder, though, which made it easier to paddle hard without sweating profusely. When we got close to the island, though, we decided to just keep paddling and make it all the way to Bengtsfors. We arrived there at about 5 and called the guy to pick us up.
Then we spent another night on the camp site in Ed. I was looking forward to a warm shower the next morning but the thing seemed to be broken (or not turned on or whatever) because even though I put in my 20 SEK, no warm water came out of the shower. Well, another day of washing with ice cold water didn’t make too much of a difference either.
Then we spent the rest of the day in the car. It was a 10 hour trip which turned into 12 hours because of breaks and such.
It was a great trip that felt a lot longer than just a week. I was extremely relaxed and being outside for a while was great, especially because of the absolutely amazing weather we’ve had. Now I am looking forward to slowly getting back to work. I have a lot of e-mails and stuff to work through…
Dear Diary,
my contract officially ends on November 1st. It is not at all clear to me what I’ll be doing after that. But I just learned that there’s another conference this year that I might want to go to: Psychonomics. It’s in mid-November and will be held in Boston this year.
I’ll have to talk to my supervisors about going there. It’d be great to go but I have to make sure there’s money to cover my travel costs etc. The submission deadline for abstracts is June 1st so I have a bit more time to figure it out. But given that I’ll be gone for more than a week in May and will be very busy with a bunch of other things means that June 1st will be around much sooner than I’d want.
Would be awesome to go, though. It’d also be a good place to look for post-docs…
Dear Diary,
my conference paper was accepted for an oral presentation at the conference in Philadelphia in August. I got extremely positive reviewer comments and have until May 13th to submit the revised and final version. Because there wasn’t much to change, I already did all the necessary changes two weeks (or so) ago. Yesterday, I double-checked them all and then submitted the revised and final version of the paper.
So that’s off of my to-do list as well. I am looking forward to going to Philly in August. I’ll have to see whether I can manage to go a week earlier or stay a week longer (or both!) to make sure I can visit friends and do a bit of vacationing.
Dear Diary,
this week, I was reasonably productive.
I finished up coding one experiment and the data collection started yesterday evening. My research assistant (RA) CS is doing the data collection. We won’t collect data next week because students are taking their resit exams.
My other RA is collecting data for another project. It’s a two-session experiment: the first session happened this week and the second will take place in four weeks. So things are on track but I don’t need to actively work on this yet.
Then I’ve been planning two more experiments. I have received confirmation from the ethics committee that I am allowed to run the experiments. That’s the first step. Then I met with a programmer yesterday who’ll help me write the code for the experiments. He’s very good and super nice and I should have the code early next week. Then I can test it during the week and then start data collection the week after that: on May 2.
That’ll be a short week because I’ll go to Germany on May 4 in the evening. The next morning, we’ll go to Sweden and I’ll be gone for the rest of the week and the week after that. Therefore, I want to make sure that everything’s up and running and I’ve tested everything. Because then my RAs can collect data while I am gone. If all goes well, I will be on vacation and when I get back, I’ll have data from three experiments!
And then I can dive into analyzing the data and writing stuff up! The plan sounds too good to be true so I’ll see how it actually works out. :D
On top of those projects, there is one more project that I’ve been working on this week. For that project, I’ll pre-register a study for the first time. The idea is that you write up your hypotheses before you start data collection and make them public. You also have to explain in detail how exactly you are going to analyze the data and all that stuff. I wrote a first draft of that “proposal” this week and sent it out to the people that are involved in the project. Based on their feedback, I hope I can finish up the pre-registration next week so that I can start data collection in the first week of May.
So, yeah. Lots of planning and organizing this week. But it’s going well. When I get back from Sweden, I’ll stop collecting data for a while and focus on analyzing and, most importantly, writing. I really need to make sure that I put all this stuff that I am doing at the moment on paper.
Dear Diary,
last weekend I went to Germany. I had an appointment at the garage to get new summer tires (the old ones were 10 years old and needed to be replaced). I combined that with a short visit to my parents place to see them and my brother. It was good to spend some time with them. I also saw my grandparents and, together with my brother, visited my grandma. I hadn’t seen them for a while and it was good to check up on them.
My brother is going to be in Jerusalem for the next three months and we made vague plans for me to visit him there. My good friend GS is going to come visit me in June and he booked his flight from NYC to Amsterdam and his flight back is from Tel Aviv to NYC. So we’re planning to spend a couple of days in Israel but haven’t made specific plans, yet.
We’ll see. I don’t like planning this type of stuff too much but am definitely looking forward to the trip! Both because it’s fun to hang out with my brother but also, of course, because Israel is a super interesting place. And I’ll have GS with which makes everything 10 times more fun!
Dear Diary,
my general plan is to take a break after I graduate. I don’t have any specific plans for what I want to do after the PhD but I like the idea of doing a post-doc somewhere. Maybe in the States. I am not sure but that’s an idea I like.
Immediately after the PhD, though, I’d like to take some time off. Maybe half a year or so. My initial idea was to travel around in south-east Asia in that time. It’s a relatively cheap part of the world with lots to so and do. More recently, however, another idea has occupied my mind…
.. the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). It is a hiking path that starts at the US-Mexican border and ends at the US-Canadian border. It is just under 4,300 km long. The timing is very critical: you start in late March/early April to get through the Sierra in time and you need to be up in the Cascades (close the Canadian border) before the snow starts in August. The general recommendation is to aim for about 20 miles (32 km) of hiking a day to make the entire hike in less than half a year and have the weather on your side.
That, of course, is absolutely insane. But it sounds like an absolutely amazing challenge. Just live outside for half a year, taking a tent, sleeping bag, and backpack with basic stuff and see the most amazing nature. Be on your own for a while, meet new people and walk with them. And: be cut of from society for a while. Don’t check your mail, just walk.
It’s something I’ve been dreaming about for two weeks now. I think the chances of me actually doing it are relatively small. But there is a chance I can pull this off. In the ideal situation, I’ll hand in my thesis in October and will defend it some time in February. From the grant that I got, I can still be paid until February. Then, in March, I fly to San Diego to hang out with AH and ask her to drive me down to the Mexican border. Then just walk for half a year (how hard can it be, right? :D ) and then finish in Mannig Park and take the bus to Vancouver to hang out with my brother’s extended family.
The only missing piece in this puzzle: Ideally, I’d secure a job for when I am done with my half year of traveling. I am not sure how realistic it is to get a job in December/January/February that would start in November 2017. But that’d be fucking perfect.
Ah well – one can dream, right? :)
Dear Diary,
I went to Bremen/OHZ again yesterday afternoon because I had another appointment there. My car was due for an inspection and the cambelt had to be replaced. My car was in the garage just before Christmas already so some of the things that needed to happen for the inspection were already taken care of. Still, the replacing the cambelt is expensive and all in all, it cost me another 500€. So, in total, I spend about 1k€ on the car in the last couple of weeks, plus the 580€ for the insurance.
I guess I’ll move away when I am done with my PhD and will sell the car then. So I am expecting to get about another year out of it before I can get some money for it. I hope no major additional costs accumulate until then. I’ll get a new set of tires when it’s time to change back to summer tires but I hope that’s that.
Super Public Diary 