Thursday, December 13, 2007
Pukeatronic!
- Amy Wang, Futurama
I had a good meeting with the boss, and that coupled with me giving him my first chapter next week should propel me well into the new semester and get me the hell out of here by May. J scared the shit out of me yesterday when she mentioned that I needed to find a job and somewhere for our family to live in the coming year. I've been saying the job search starts in December for so long I had quite forgotten that it was, in fact, December.
So where to look? We had a speaker last week from the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. It was a very good talk and I was made aware of the existence of that particular Max Planck Institute. I don't believe I have yet regaled you with stories from Seth's EuroTrip '99 but I worked at a different Max Planck Institute during that summer. Gorgeous facilities and a nearly limitless budget courtesy of the German government, it's THE place to do research in Germany if not all of Western Europe. So obviously I will be applying there. Hopefully my particular areas of research will catch the eye of the advisor I would like to work for over there. Then we would just have to start learning German and looking into what it would take for us to take the cats with us.
Back on this side of the pond, I'll probably look around Orlando, Birmingham, the Pacific Northwest and maybe even the Northeast some too. We have ties to the first two cities and the other areas, neither one of us have lived there before and it would be an exciting adventure. Sorry Midwest, we're not really considering you, well, Colorado is on the list and maybe Montana but those aren't really Midwestern states. Of course, you will be the first to know when something goes down and I still see myself blogging in the future, so no worries there.
Everyone knows that 3rd world countries aren't the greatest. But J found a particular aspect of that knowledge particularly troubling recently. J just assumed that mail would arrive to any part of the world expeditiously but little did she know, that is not always the case. Once while living in the Dominican Republic, our family was astounded when we received a letter through the Dominican Postal Service from a friend in NYC that arrived in 3 days time. Un-freakin'-believable. Normally we didn't rely on the local postal service at all, instead paying for a mail service based out of Ft. Lauderdale that flew mail to a couple different places in the Caribbean.
We asked my parents if we could send them some Christmas presents through the mail and my father informed us that it usually takes 2 weeks to 3 months and that they might have to pay some taxes to customs to actually receive it. They suggested donating a toy to Toys for Tots, or keeping them when they come back in May for my graduation.
I'll start Seth's EuroTrip saga in the next few days. It'll be nice to write for pleasure instead of science writing for work. Hitler just invaded Poland in "Destined to Witness."
I had a good meeting with the boss, and that coupled with me giving him my first chapter next week should propel me well into the new semester and get me the hell out of here by May. J scared the shit out of me yesterday when she mentioned that I needed to find a job and somewhere for our family to live in the coming year. I've been saying the job search starts in December for so long I had quite forgotten that it was, in fact, December.
So where to look? We had a speaker last week from the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. It was a very good talk and I was made aware of the existence of that particular Max Planck Institute. I don't believe I have yet regaled you with stories from Seth's EuroTrip '99 but I worked at a different Max Planck Institute during that summer. Gorgeous facilities and a nearly limitless budget courtesy of the German government, it's THE place to do research in Germany if not all of Western Europe. So obviously I will be applying there. Hopefully my particular areas of research will catch the eye of the advisor I would like to work for over there. Then we would just have to start learning German and looking into what it would take for us to take the cats with us.
Back on this side of the pond, I'll probably look around Orlando, Birmingham, the Pacific Northwest and maybe even the Northeast some too. We have ties to the first two cities and the other areas, neither one of us have lived there before and it would be an exciting adventure. Sorry Midwest, we're not really considering you, well, Colorado is on the list and maybe Montana but those aren't really Midwestern states. Of course, you will be the first to know when something goes down and I still see myself blogging in the future, so no worries there.
Everyone knows that 3rd world countries aren't the greatest. But J found a particular aspect of that knowledge particularly troubling recently. J just assumed that mail would arrive to any part of the world expeditiously but little did she know, that is not always the case. Once while living in the Dominican Republic, our family was astounded when we received a letter through the Dominican Postal Service from a friend in NYC that arrived in 3 days time. Un-freakin'-believable. Normally we didn't rely on the local postal service at all, instead paying for a mail service based out of Ft. Lauderdale that flew mail to a couple different places in the Caribbean.
We asked my parents if we could send them some Christmas presents through the mail and my father informed us that it usually takes 2 weeks to 3 months and that they might have to pay some taxes to customs to actually receive it. They suggested donating a toy to Toys for Tots, or keeping them when they come back in May for my graduation.
I'll start Seth's EuroTrip saga in the next few days. It'll be nice to write for pleasure instead of science writing for work. Hitler just invaded Poland in "Destined to Witness."
Labels: book, Europe, J, job search
# posted by Seth @ 6:18 AM 
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