Packing

Yep it is that time once again!  I won’t be packing up much, just my books.. I hate to leave books behind and have done it twice now. The first time I left Sydney in 2004 and then again in 2009, although the last time most of books went to good homes.  This time they are coming back with me to Holland!  No one here reads English and I really don’t want them to go to waste especially since I bought them all new.

It is hard to try and get work done, I am really ready to leave and am kicking myself in the head about the fact that I told my boss I would be here until the end of January.. WHY?? It is not that I am getting paid. I think it is a weird sense of responsibility that I need to leave everything is a way that someone else can continue.. And I do know this is not bad thing at all, but it just seems that I am putting myself through more stress than I need to.

Tomorrow evening I am leaving for Holland, hopefully the snow has been cleared from the train tracks and I will actually be able to get home.. While there is snow in basically all of Europe, Tours only has RAIN and lots of it.

UPDATE:  I started writing the paragraphs above a few days ago.. It is now the 26th of December and I have made it home,  instead of a 5.5 hr journey it took me 20 hrs to get home.. Some of these hours were spent in a hotel since after I got to Brussels there were no more trains to Holland!   It was not too bad in the end but it sucked while I was on the train and every 10 min it would have to stop because of the weather.

Dad looks like a balloon,  the Prednisone has made him swell up completely but hopefully he will be able to stop taking that soon so he can shrink back to normal..  He seems pretty OK with me moving back to Sydney and even suggested that it might be time to get a permanent job while  I am there.. than he started talking about how we should go to South Africa again for a Holiday (He can not even walk 150 m) but yeah, why not.. I Just played along, but have definitely planned to come home once a year every year, for the time that I am away.

While yesterday was Xmas day, it was just the three of us at home and we did not do anything.. It felt like any other day, today there are some people coming over which is good since I am getting a bit bored with just mum and dad.  Tomorrow I am off to Nijmegen for a few days, then going to see Judith and celebrating NYE with Conny in Breda..

Hope your Christmas was great!

Despite good intentions

I can not stop refreshing different webforums on Marie Curie or the Cordis Website.  I know that there is no way I am getting funded and yet, every 3 minutes seconds I keep hitting the refresh button… It is driving me INSANE .  Yesterday was particularly bad, since suddenly people on the forums were all like.. oh I just got an email.. so from 12.00  until 20.00 that is all I did and then this morning I knew: no news so no money and instead of just moving onto my work I decided I had to check the forums again and of course there was one  person mentioning how he only just received an email….  and I was sucked right back in.  It is crazy, or better I am crazy; the people on the forum’s who received their emails all scored around the 90 (that is almost 10 points higher than my score) . The success rate dropped from 20.4% last year to 17.1% this year…  Anyway to make myself stop looking I sent an email to Peter, my proposed supervisor, thanking him for his help and informing him that I am going back to Sydney and that the emails had been sent out yesterday.  He replied saying that he understood my decision but was still hopeful we were getting funding.  HOW THE FREAK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO HELP ME DO WORK????

I did actually email the HR department at usyd  and the immigration people to ask some visa questions. I just want to make sure that I do all the things that are required (like language test etc.)

OK back to REFRESH button

 

 

I just made

it SNOW on my blog.  And unlike real snow, I actually rather like this!

 

 

So it has been a while

Things are looking up!! I had an amazing time in Sydney and was planning on uploading pics but never got round to doing it.

I got the preliminary results back from the Marie Curie and was stoked to see that I scored 82!!! I know it won’t be enough to get funding but the fact that I improved by 10 points and scored above my goal (80)  is great!   Now I am waiting on the ranked list, and while I know there is no way I would have made it on the A-list (definitely funded).  I still keep hoping and checking the website everyday even though the results don’t come out until the END of december.

I have also started the first tentative steps to getting things sorted for my move back to Sydney, very tentative I might add, since I have just checked what I need to do to start visa process.  Once again it is a lot of bullcrap.. but it has to be done.

And then my work in the lab, I am trying really hard to complete one experiment which I am positive I can get done by my Xmas break on the 23rd.  The other experiment is kinda falling to pieces, while I do hope that I can at least have a protocol ready by the time I leave, I am not that positive.. And then there  is all the organising I need to do to actually leave this freaking place!!

Luckily for me,  Conny and her GF want to spend Xmas in Tours  (not b/c of Tours, but they just want to get away from home) and since they are driving down they were more than happy to bring back whatever I need bringing back (mainly books,shoes and clothes). I am hoping to sell all my furniture to the Frenchies here.

Fingers crossed everything runs smoothly