A tale of two winters

 

After having returned to Brazil and sort of settled temporarily it dawned to me that moving to the southern hemisphere right at the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere means that I will be going through two winters in sequence. And what is more, if I move back north after a few months this will mean that I will be going through three winters in sequence! And before people start to think that moving south is all nice, fun, beaches (and bitches), check out the weather report from my iPod this morning. This is not fun at all, and I got no bitches as well, damn it!

Back to the old new World

After nearly four years living in the UK, and having finished my PhD, I now return to the new world, my old home, and current base of operations. Celebrating this, I treat you to the official bird from the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the Southern Lapwing, photographed by me in the city of Gramado.
Given the uncertainties of a research career for a neophyte such as myself, I am not yet sure where I will be headed next, but hopefully something good.

As I arrive home, I will at least be able to catch up with some old friends, even from Europe, and hopefully that will offset the blues I get from going away from the place that has been such a welcoming home for me in the past years.

Last weeks in London

From Tower of London

Yesterday I have cancelled my utilities here in London, thus marking the transition from a resident of London to a mere visitor. It felt slightly worse than I had anticipated, since it just sank into me that I am leaving this place, possibly never to come back again. The story between London and I is rather odd, or typical, who knows, but when I arrived here, I felt almost overwhelmed by the number of things that went on around me, given my ADHD. Then, when all of that became background noise, and I started learning about all the cool things that go on in this place, and fell in love with this place. Even the excuse that the things that I like from other countries and places does not hold here. Everything worth buying that exists somewhere can be bought in London. I finish my post with a quotation from Samuel Jonhson, and a picture of my transportation nemesis for these years in London.

"When a man is tired of London he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford."

Viva

Today I finally reached the formal end of the road in my PhD, and sat the Viva Voce exam here at King's College. I have been told time and again that I should enjoy this process because it will probably the first and only time that people will actually read all my research in depth and are obliged to be concerned with it. And indeed it seems that my examiners Mark d'Inverno and Alexandra Coddington were concerned with my thesis and actually read it in its entirety, so the whole process was a tad harder than I initially anticipated. Ultimately though, the whole defense was uneventful, since I knew my stuff, and I was approved with minor corrections to the final volume of my thesis.

Oddly enough, I do not feel exhilarated about this whole thing, which brings me a sense of guilt about not feeling good about having accomplished this. I guess this whole last year has drained my expectations about everything, since it seems my degree is not getting me anywhere in the current economic climate. Well, that is me, an incurable optimist.

IMAX yesterday, Shit today and Mock Viva tomorrow

On a slight follow-up of the last post, today my supervisor told me that I will have a "mock viva", which unlike the name may suggest, is not a PhD defense where people mock me, or where I practice my mocking skills, but rather, a preparation for the real deal viva voce next week. Oddly enough, I do not feel a thing about it, neither fear, nor excitement, nor apprehension, not even happiness that this whole PhD process is coming to an end. My supervisor thinks I may get cocky for the process and screw it up, but the truth of the matter is that I am completely apathetic to the viva itself. This is no bragging or anything, but I think that at this point, I need to put on a real effort to screw the pooch in my viva, since the combination of my supervisor's and my perfectionism meant that the thesis I submitted is unlikely to be rejected outright (otherwise I would not have submitted it, and my supervisor would not allow me to do so), and my obsessive behavior means that I will definitely read my thesis and flag it abundantly, regardless of how boring it is at this time.

My apathy in reading this stuff leads me to what I did yesterday, which was to finally watch Star Trek, on the IMAX. And my apathy is not really towards the movie, I thought it was a very good movie, and the IMAX screen made the viewing experience much more enjoyable. The only problem is that, since J.J. Abrams was trying to emulate the space shots from the Battlestar Galactica series, that is shaking the "camera" a lot during combat sequences, it was very disorienting to watch it in a cinema with a screen that covers all your field of view. I suppose that if my mind was not so screwed by all the shit that is going on (or not going on as I expected) in my life, I would have had more of a blast in the movie theater yesterday. But then again, who knows...

Back from AAMAS in Budapest

From Budapest

So now I am back from my trip to Budapest where I attended the AAMAS conference to present a couple of my papers, as this year I was lucky to have gotten two papers in the main conference, and one in the Industry Track. Now I should be focusing on reading my thesis for my Viva next Tuesday, but somehow, given my current lack of destination, this thesis defense thing is not as exciting as I have been expecting to be for the last three years. I surely hope to feel something at the defense time, but this seems rather unlikely now, and my motivation to re-read my thesis gets smaller by the minute.

Too incompetent to see incompetence

I have recently read a book called Bad Science, which talks about the current trend for many people to look for quack alternative medicine, like homeopathy, acupuncture and other less "mainstream" modalities of mumbo jumbo, and how this is partly to blame on journalists doing a terrible job in reporting science. Besides one interesting insight regarding people who took degrees in the humanities inability to understand science leading them to try to undermine science in their reporting, the author refers to and comments a very interesting paper about incompetence.

This paper is called Unskilled and Unaware of It: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments, by two psychologists from Cornell, and I even went to the trouble of downloading it and reading it all. It is indeed a treasure trove of interesting quotations and, I believe, spot on in its analysis of incompetent people. In a nutshell, the article investigates the hypothesis that incompetent people's lack of understanding of any given field not only causes them to do poorly in the area of their incompetence, but also robs them of the ability to notice that they are incompetent, leading them to inflate their assessment of how well they do in the area of their incompetence. This conclusion is also interesting to relate to the fact that most people believe in a logical fallacy, that they are above average in a given domain. If you have not realized what the fallacy is, I will be kind to point out that it is statistically impossible for most people to be above average in any given field. Although it does seem to be the case that most men truly believe that they are better drivers than the average man.

Uruguayan Food

 

In my first days in Brazil, my brother and I went for some Uruguayan food, which, as one might expect, is meat heavy. And that is not only fine by me, it is indeed, great, as you can see from my joyful face.

Ig Nobel in the UK

Last Thursday I went to a talk from the people who organize the Ig Nobel awards for Improbable Research, but here in the UK. One of the highlights for me in the event was from a Dutchman who first described Homosexual Necrophiliac Rape among Mallard Ducks, reported in the Rotterdam Museum of Natural History. There were, of course, other very interesting research results, including a comparison of the jumping performance of fleas from dogs and cats, and the mental reward for biting crisps.
After this interesting Thursday evening, I decided to close shop for the week to prepare to go to Brazil tomorrow morning. Let us hope everything goes well there and I do not forget to bring anything important in my luggage.

Submitted

From Bleargh

Today I submitted my thesis, so it is all done and dusted, but the feeling is bittersweet, since I do not have a certain direction for the future. This situation makes this transition in my life a bit moot.