Late June, I wrote into my calendar “Thesis countdown – 6 months”. Today I stopped to consolitade my tasks, and just realized that I’m down to two and a half months until my first thesis deadline (the pre-thesis comitee – don’t really have a good name for this in english). Of course, I’m nowhere near 50% done.

So things are picking up in the work/research front. Among my current tasks, I’m writing experiments for two different papers, one with two researchers (one from the U.S. and one from Brazil) who I met at GECCO, and the other suggested by a Japanese professor which visited the lab two weeks ago on a local conference. Also, I’m organizing the arrival of a new Post Doc student in november – making sure he has a desk to study, a roof to sleep under, etc. Finally, I’m writing two papers, one which is the translation of a paper recently published by my laboratory – not sure how that will turn out yet – the other one a paper for a local conference in Okinawa in December.

Between all this stuff, my lab days have been quite busy – but that is not to say that I haven’t enjoyed my free time, though. Mainly I have been doing Geocaching in my weekends – a hobby which consists of talking long walks to find small treasures hiding in interesting/difficult places, with the help of a GPS. I also have an RPG campaign going on, which keeps my creative juices flowing. Next on the schedule is a part-time job playing with some kids on a costume at an English School during Halloween, and a gaming party the next week or so.

I’m also halfway through “Salt: A World History”, a genial book from Mark Kurlansky, where he describes the role salt has played in many different societies over the centuries. Sometimes I can’t but feel that he is exaggerating on the importance of salt for
armies, governments and revolutions. I’ll try to write more about the book once I’m done with it (maybe next week or so).

So things are going mostly well – thesis is coming by and the pace is picking up fast. My only options are to ride the wave or get drowned in worries, so …