And so this is Christmas...

I hate Christmas so much. I've been hating it for ages, mostly because of the atmosphere in our family. This year didn't change my general impression of it too much, although there were only three fights during these days. I despise the compulsory family visits, the "everybody loves everybody" play while it's clear that the feelings of affection are quite sparse around here, and the fact that I cannot decide which part of the family (if any) I want to be with on the 24th. When will I have a normal Christmas?

But now the visits ended, everybody survived, and Christmas is over. Yay! A new year is coming up, and if I had time and I didn't have to work on my thesis, I would try to account for the events of this year so that I can start the next year happy and organized. But I do have to work on my thesis and I do have to find time to meet my friends, so I only think about this past year once in a while. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel: my thesis is fine, I have two more applications to send in and I have to do Rosemary's module's stuff, get an internet connection in my flat, and that's it! By the time I'll be skiing, my life will be in order.

While writing motivation letters...

I wish I had time to write... So many things are happening. Research, people leaving, exams, end-of-semester rush. Tonight is the application deadline for 3 of the universities I am applying to. 4 more hours to perfect my motivation statement. I am leaving in 10 hours and I am not packed yet. (The washing machine and the dryer are working.) I'm supposed to finish the analysis of my data and my SRT homework before that. I'll be leaving my room in a total mess, which I hate, because I like to arrive back into order. I survived the semester without any complete all-nighters, and now, the first one after the semester has ended will be one...

I HATE WORD LIMITS!

Extension!

Dear Diana,

On behalf of the Director of Education I would like to inform you that you have an extension for SCIE 400.
The new deadline is 28-12, 2007.
Please make sure your instructor has your work on time.

best wishes,

Ingrid Snooy

drs. Lieke Schreel
Curriculum Manager & Registrar University College Utrecht

drs. Mariëlle Hoff
International Officer

Ingrid Snooy
Assistant to the Registrar

Sun is shining!

Wow.... I haven't seen the sun shine for what it seems like weeks. But now the lab is glowing in the sunshine and I have the best view of campus. So beautiful!

Change of plans

No sleep. I'm testing from 19.00 till 21.00 again. I brought a blanket with me this time. The heating is on, but so is the air conditioning... And during the weekend, the heating does not work... Ice, ice, baby. I dropped by Floris' office on my way because I saw that he was still sitting in front of his computer and I told him that he should go home. He asked why I'm dragging a blanket with me. I said I was moving into the psych lab. I might as well do that.

What we need here is a couch. It would be perfect for participants who come too early when somebody is still doing a test, and of course, the tired researher could also sometimes enjoy a comfortable spot. Only joking... But I do spend more time here than anywhere else, so I might bring along a pillow for next time. Especially, when I'm so tired.

To do list - 7 December, Friday

Some say that planning is the key to success. So, I planned what I'll do today:

• 00:30 shower
• 00:45 do laundry
• 00:50 compiling Dutch portfolio
• 1:15 go to bed
• 5:00 alarm goes off
• 5:05 snooze
• 5:10 get up and put laundry into dryer
• 5:15 compiling Dutch portfolio
• 6:00 learn the format of a Dutch letter, learn some sentences that might come handy
• (at the same time) make instant noodles for pre-breakfast
• 6:20 check and adjust CV
• 7:00 write cover letters and requests of TOEFL score waiver to Yale, MIT and UPenn
• 7:40 drop by Voltaire and switch the printer on
• 7:50 have breakfast
• 8:15 pick up the Dutch dictionaries that Emily will put in my mailbox till then
• 8:25 print portfolio, CV (1), letters (3 of each)
• 8:45 go to Dutch test
• 10:45: leave Dutch test
• 10:50: drop by College Hall to get my transcript scanned and put in a sealed envelope
• 11:00-13:00 testing for my thesis
• drop off extension request at Floris' office
• cycle to town
• 13:30-14:00 see Nada for consultation
• buy envelopes and post transcripts etc.
• 16:00-17:30 testing for my thesis
• 17:30 dinner
• 18:10-20:10 FREE TIME/SLEEP
• 20:20 testing for my thesis
• 21:00-00:30 SLEEP
• 00:30-00:45 shower
• 01:00-05:00 chief in the bar
• shower
• sleep

I better get started... I have 10 minutes till showering :)

Testing, smoking ban, unexpected visit

Here I am again. This day is starting very slowly. Yesterday, on the other hand, I woke up relatively early and spent the whole day writing my developmental psych essay. It's a 4000 (well, ended up being 4300) word essay and we were supposed to do it in couples but the instructor was allright with me doing it alone. Group work is a bitch. I rather do double or triple the work than get others involved. I sometimes start to think that I'd be quite low on agreeableness in the Big Five. But I don't need the experience of pulling through a group with the work I am doing again. I need people around me who are motivated, want to do work and actually know how to do it. Please, please, please admit me into a good program! UC has been a huge disappointment in this sense...

I spent the last two weeks with testing people for my thesis and tomorrow I'm starting the second round. I might have to make the new input files by then :) 32 people, each tested twice, each test taking 30-40 minutes, that is almost 43 hours of testing. Plus the time of setting up, the time of people being late or not showing up, chatting a bit, etc. Since the program in the psych lab does not want to run the experiment properly, I need to test people one by one, on my laptop. How lovely. But this is going to grant me my extension, if I'm lucky enough. Frank will sign it, Floris will sign it, and I only need to get Lonia to agree.

I've been also sitting at the BarCo interviews for the positions of Chair, Vice Chair and Building Manager with the present BarCo. What a shame I am not allowed to say anything about the interviews! Only that I never ever want Cassiopée to wake me up 1 minute before a meeting again... May I bitch about the UCSA Board then? No, that wouldn't be nice.

Talking about the UCSA Board, last Wednesday was the GA about changing the smoking policy of the bar. Ok, here comes the bitching, whatever. Why the hell can the UCSA Board not ask us for our opinion? My favorite question and answer of the night was the "Have you thought of how you will implement a smoking ban" by Karin and the "We will discuss that later" by Eelke. So, we were voting on something that they don't even know how to implement. Now, I am a non-smoker, and I would prefer working in a non-smoking environment, but the Tuesday and Friday both non-smoking are a very bad idea. We have many chiefs who are smoking and they will need smoking breaks. The first issue is that they are not allowed to leave the bar without a chief. The second is that if the bartenders are smoking too, there will be about 30 minutes in an hour when the bar will not have the right number of people working behind the bar. Then, we will either have to have non-smoking chiefs, which would discrimiate against smokers and would be very stupid because some of our best chiefs are smokers, or I'd have to schedule only non-smokers for the party nights, but that would be the most unfair thing I could think of. Third, I don't know what the UCSA Board thinks about enforcing this, but I'm not going to tell a chief who starts smoking during their shift to stop. They come as volunteers. If the UCSA Board is willing to be there every non-smoking evening and enforce the ban, I'm fine with it. But there's another GA coming up in two weeks and we'll see what happens there.

And finally, I had an unexpected visitor last week. So, this is time to introduce Beki. I met him at the party at the rowing club when I was at home. When my sister introduced us to each other, we figured we have met before - probably something like 15 years ago, when I was running around at the Csepel rowing club as a little girl, and he was already rowing. He's been rowing for 21 years, so that's quite probable and he says he remembers, so I'll trust him on that. At the end of the party we exchanged contacts and we started writing and Skype-ing quite frequently when I got back to Utrecht. One evening he said that we'll probably not be able to skype the next evening, because he won't be there, and the day after in the evening I got a message from him saying "can you let me in?" :) And he was here. It's only slightly crazy to travel across half of Europe to see someone without asking whether you can come and knowing what the other would say :) He probably chose one of the worst weeks he could, but eventually I still got the testing done and he still did some of his drawing tasks and was training a bit. Damn, it's pretty impressive he came here!

Before hell breaks loose

The general idea is that the last two weeks of the semester are always the hardest. For me, this time this was extended to something like the last 7-8 weeks of the semester. So, the title actually does not make too much sense.

It's very easy to get used to the continuous workload once you realize that you'll be able to manage it. That point came last year in the fall semester before the midterms. I looked at my agenda, counted my exams, the papers, the ASIC and the College Council meetings, the MediaLab workshops and I bursted out in tears. That was the turning point. It's a bit like a switch that you can set from the panic mode to the "well, let's take it one by one, and I'll make it" mode. Since then, I've been operating in the latter mode.

These days I don't like inquiring about how people feel because I get the same type of answer. I hate when people answer "busy" when I ask how they are. First of all, everybody is busy. So, simply "busy" does not say anything. Maybe "busy with applications". Or "busy because I have an exam in two days and I haven't started reading the book yet". Second, because it assumes that busy has the same mood reference for everybody. You can feel quite contented with being busy or you can hate the whole world because it's making you busy. Do all people mean the latter when they answer "busy"?

So, how am I? I am well, thanks. This day is a bit grey and depressing - it's been raining all day. That is, since I woke up at exactly midday. I had weird dreams but I don't remember what they were. I feel a bit scattered all over the place. You know, one of those days when you need to take your time and think through what you need to do. But I also feel surprisingly optimistic today. Maybe because I still did not make a mental list of things I need to get done :)

Well, I have an appointment with Simone to help her with her statistics, so I need to go now. I might make more sense later.

What to do when you don't feel like writing a proposal for a linguistics paper?

A product of today's burst of creativity and of the "fed-up'ness" with language acquisition literature:


I thought that "clean your shit" would be appropriate but too crude...

Thesis stuff

I decided to sacrifice today on the altar of thesis work already 3 weeks ago. There was simply no time on any other days... Yay to planning!

After a short start, I'll have to do an extra-fast finish. Today I'll program the first four experiments for the first testing day. They are in theory almost the same - but "in theory" still means an extra half an hour of work on the last three after I'm done with the blueprint. Anyway, I'm feeling smart today and I'll work till it's done, no matter how long it will take. The way I can get the program do what I want is already figured out, but unfortunately, this is not the convenient copy-paste type of file that you can make in half an hour. I already spent three full hours on measuring where "did too"-s and "who was"-s occur in sentences, and I'll still have to do that for the fillers.

The only thing I don't understand is why Frank insists on 40 participants. Ok, so I have 4 experiments, which are structurally different, and right, in one cell you should have at least 10 people, but it still doesn't make sense. The four lists differ only in the order of condition presentation. So, eventually everybody gets to be tested in all conditions, everything is tested within and not between subjects. In fact, there is almost as much difference between the testing of two people who get the same lists as between two people who get different lists, due to the effect of randomization. All in all, I don't think that the four lists really represent four conditions, they only alleviate the need to display the same sentence to the same person several times. Whatever, I can't do more than what I can do anyway, so I'll test as many people as I can find this semester, and that's it. If I tested 24, I can analyse my data, write up the paper, hand it in to the %!/+=@& administration and test another 16 next semester, if needed, then re-analyse the data, and re-write the paper. Then, everybody is going to be happy. The administration gets their paper. I get to do everything properly. Frank will get his data.

Did I already say anything about how frustrating I find the stubornness of the administration with the stupid deadlines? For a term paper, allright. But this is actually supposed to be something of high quality, real academic work, and actually, for my own pleasure. And then I get this e-mail of "don't even think of asking for extensions, because you won't get it"... And then I think "____ ___".

Back to work now.

GRE experiences

I survived!

It was a good idea to go there a bit early because I didn't find the testing centre very easily. The supervisor girl was very sweet and smiled continuously - she's probably used to anxious exam takers. She took my passport and took a picture of me. I had 20 minutes to sit around, drink an energy drink, eat some chocolate and pretend to read The Economist. The moment I had to enter the testing room, I became very conscious of the whole situation. I decided to go through the tutorials and actually read what they say, to fight my anxiety. The "how to use a mouse" section was my favorite :) At the end of the tutorials, a screen indicated that from that point onward things were going to get serious. The "Proceed" button looked like the sign above the door of hell in Dante's La Divina Commedia: it could just as well have said "Ki itt belépsz, hagyj fel minden reménnyel". Haha, but then, what else can you do?

It's really exhausting to sit the GREs. You can't manipulate the order of the questions and you cannot go back once you had confirmed an answer. You sit there for 4 hours. You are under severe time pressure. Really, it's not very pleasant.

So, the first section I got was the analytical writing one and I chose the lesser evil of the two topics. The statement was something like "If the goal is worthy, any means to attain it are justifiable." 2 minutes of complete blackout, 2 minutes of regaining consciousness and 2 minutes of scribbling down random words on the piece of pink paper that the testing centre provided. I wrote about Communism in Russia, animal experiments in the field of medical science and the beauty industry, and global warming. The last five minutes I spent by re-reading what I had written. Time's up. Next section - argumetation analysis. Easy as pie. 30 minutes, the text is full of fallacies, wrong conclusions: there's enough to write about. Time's up. 10 minutes of break. Maths. 60 seconds of break. English. It was ridiculously hard. No wonder - it's supposed to be hard for native speakers...

During the instructions, you see a screen that says that you may have to complete an experimental section, which is just like one of the proper sections, but you won't know which one is the real one. So, I was just about to stand up as I finished the verbal section when a new maths section came up. It was like "sh*t, this cannot be true..." But it was, so I ran out and asked for more paper and started solving the problems. By then I was completely exhausted. I didn't know whether this or the previous maths section was the real one and that made me anxious again. Ah, I hated that exam so much!

But then, it was over.

And the results? Tatatatam!

My English score is a total joke. It's very bad. But my quantitative score is pretty good: 720 out of 800. After all, practising was not in vain. All I wanted was something acceptable, so that the universities I'm applying to wouldn't just throw away my application after the first glance. And 720 is pretty competitive. They will just have to believe that I do speak English.

Pre-GRE meditation

My 100th post is a day before one of the most important exams in my life. Ok, let's not overdramatize the situation :) After all, it will only decide whether I'll spend the next 4 years on this side of the Atlantic or on the other :))

Oh dear, can you feel that I'm anxious? Before the SATs, we had such a nice atmosphere in Sunley. I was one of those people who didn't do sh*t, just got a book the night before the exam, joined the quiet room crowd, enjoyed some lively conversations and very casually walked into the library to sit the exam in the morning. Now I've been practising quite extensively for the quantitative part, there is no one around (not close by, at least), and eventually I'll go to bed early so that I can wake up fresh and alert (this hasn't happened in the last few days). I even cut my nails so that I could type easier! They feel quite weird but I do type faster this way.

I'm trying to convince myself that there's nothing to be scared of. I'm an exam-taking machine, I cannot prepare any better in the remaining time, and so I'll just go there and do my best. And if it's not good enough? It's not the end of the world. And I can always, of course, discuss how stupid it is to measure your abilities with a test on how you can solve maths problems under time pressure and with a test on how big is your never-to-use-or-even-to-encounter-words vocabulary.

I shaved my legs, I have nice underwear to wear - these are to improve my feelings of confidence. I have chocolate and energy drink tablets in my bag. My passport and ID on the table.

I can do it! And if not... cognitive dissonance will solve it all :)

Play and help!

I found this site today:

If things worked well, you can click on the picture above and it will take you to www.freerice.com. If not, you can just enter the address to your browser and check out the site. You can play and enrich your English vocabulary, and in the meantime, with every correct answer you will donate 10 grains of rice to fight hunger. It's a lovely idea, isn't it?

GREs on Wednesday...

Sunley update

I wish a day had more hours or I needed less sleep. This is my update to Sunley, my co-years in my house in Wales. This is all I can offer for now:

"Dearest Sunley,

It’s hard to decide what to start with. A lot of positive things happened in my life since June. Most importantly, I started dancing again! I explored the salsa/latin dance scene in Utrecht and these days I go out to salsa parties in town 2-3 times per week. (Or I would, was I not so busy most of the time, but I hope to return to this routine soon.) I got to know a lot of Latinos and Carribbean people and it turned out that after all, there is life outside campus!

Haha, I also lost 11 kilos, which I badly needed. Life is so much lighter now; I can fit into the jeans I was wearing in AC :)

I’ve been indulging myself in the life of the campus bar. This year I’m in the board of the bar as HR manager, and my task is to make sure that all the shifts are covered. An unpleasant side effect is that since it is impossible to make everybody happy with the shift distribution, people bitch about it, but I learnt to take that lightly. Pleasant side effects are cheap drinks – the first advice I got when I joined the board was “watch your liver” – a lot of dancing and a great group of people to work with.

I’m still working on the EU-funded project on the standardization of spoken commands for speech driven ICT devices. Not extremely exciting, but the research group flew me to Nice (France) in the summer for a meeting, and I was at the Interspeech 2007 conference in Antwerp (Belgium) to present a poster, so it’s worth it.

It is my last year at uni – yes, I’m graduating in May – and this means that I’m pretty busy with schoolwork. I’m doing my research on the reconstruction of VP ellipsis (for all those psycholinguistically minded people, if any), it’s killing me but I’m sure I’ll be happy with it once I manage to get the data (Cross Lexical Priming paradigm) and once I get a paper out of it.

I started filling out the online applications to a couple of programs in the US. I’m applying to doctoral programs in clinical psychology and cognitive neuroscience. I couldn’t decide which one I’d like better, so I’ll just see whether I’ll be accepted anywhere. I’m taking the GREs this Wednesday, which stresses me out a bit, but by the time you read this I probably will have survived them. I’ll hear from the unis in March, and I’ll of course update you on whether I was successful in getting into any good programs.

I’m also planning to apply to Edinburgh, but that’s a bit more complicated, and I’m trying to transfer to a university in Budapest as my back-up option, but that requires a very bureaucratic procedure. In the worst case, I’ll stay in Budapest for a year, live in my own flat, take some courses at the psychology department, find a small job, get my drivers’ license, learn to speak Spanish, and try again next year.

As for short-term plans, I’ll be in the Netherlands till the middle of December and I’ll spend the Christmas holidays in Budapest. I’ll be going on a skitrip to France in January, which I am very much looking forward to, because the whole bar board is going and that is guarantee for a lot of fun and indecency. :) Then, I’ll be in the Netherlands again till graduation and even longer, because I’ll help out with a summer course in June. So, let me know if you feel like dropping by.

Love & kusje,

Dia

PS: You must read A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson!"

CV et al.

I can't believe that I just spent 3 hours writing my CV and it is not even done! I know what you think, but no, it's not 5 pages... (It's 1,5.)

On a happier note, I think I'm going to apply to Britain!

And the second half of the semester started...

The second half of the semester started and fall has undeniably arrived. Not the nice, colorful, warm one, but the nasty, wet, cold, disgusting one. Seriously, simply opening your curtains makes you depressed. It's not only grey but also dark outside (even darker now that the clock has been reset). I trust myself on the three extra lightsources, the summery music and the (closed) orange curtains - these make it bearable here.

I haven't had the courage to check out the news at home yet, because I know that I would feel totally disppointed and ashamed. Yesterday I was in a very bad mood anyway, and today I didn't want to run the risk to feel grumpy again. I think the 11 hours of sleep last night did me good. So, I'm not checking the news, but I am working on things that I'm supposed to work on, which is surprising. I did my linguistics reading (a week too late, but that's another issue), I wrote my Dutch assignments, I prepared my Dutch presentation and I practised for my GRE. I am so going to fail that exam. I don't get how I managed to forget so much maths since high school. It's insane. And I was never going to know the English part anyway. Well, well, I think I need some more optimism here...

I'm not actually feeling as bad as it might seem.

I was planning to adjust stuff in my thesis experiment tonight, but Frank hasn't answered my mail, so I can't do much about it. Maybe tomorrow. Instead, I'm going to do some maths.

What a nerd I am.

(I managed to pull it off, by the way. Three days of studying and As on all my exams. Something is either wrong with me or with the system.)

Still at home...

(A note from yesterday. Then Irma came and took me out :) )

It's the first day of classes after the break and I'm sitting at home, listening to some latin jazz (an album I bought for the birthday of Béla bácsi) and waiting for Irma to pick me up. We're going to a concert - I've no idea what kind but she says it's going to be good. I don't like the end-of-break packing feeling, but seeing her and Sali will make it better, I'm sure.

I am exhausted. I came home from the party at my father's rowing club at 12 today, but I only slept for half an hour before that and I tried to catch some sleep later but two hours in the afternoon just won't do it. The party was pretty good - it surpassed my expectations for sure. My sister asked me to meet at 8 and even though I told her that only losers go to a party at 8 if it starts at 8, I did go, and chatted with her outside for a while. The party didn't warm up till late, when the older generations arrived. I somehow thought that this would be the case. I tried to educate my sister that you go dance when the music is good and not when enough people are dancing (the two often do not coincide) but I wasn't very successful in that. I definitely got a whiff of the curse of the Bene girls, as my sister calls it. Whoever I was dancing with, at one point or another said something like "good that your father is not here; he would take my head", if the person knew I was his daughter. No surprise my sister has a hard time getting close to the guys in the club. At least my father didn't show up because he's leading a training camp at the moment, but Vali did come, and sometimes Viki asked me to navigate to a spot where we're out of her sight.

It was the weirdest bunch at a party I've ever seen, the age of people probably ranging from 12 to somewhere in the fifties. I met some really nice people, talked and danced a lot. It's also nice to be able to put a face to the name regarding the guys my sister was talking about. It's especially nice that I can now comment on the guy that my sister used to like, and so I can warn her. Patvaros-style, big player... I stayed till the very end and I was the last one leaving the dancefloor :)

Another lovely evening in the last couple of days was when I went out to the gólyabál with Sali. We agreed that we would dress up and go to town and then see whether we feel like going to the thing. We started out at a Gyros place (just like a Turkish pizza fast restaurant), then we moved (and on the way got a bit lost) to the surprise birthday party of his sister (it would actually be a surprise if it wasn't organized by her boyfriend every year) where we saw some old faces from high school. Then we accompanied Dia to a place where she was supposed to meet some of her friends from uni. By then, I was quite tired, but they looked so scary that I said that now we *need* to check out the gólyabál, because they were from the same university, even though from a different department. People at the party seemed somewhat more my type. At the bar I met one of the student council guys that I previously met at the Sziget, so we chatted a bit and Sali and I had a drink (me: coffee, Sali: Fanta-coffee... don't ask). Then we were dancing a bit upstairs - always fun - and my red dress ruled. Stunning evening.

I finally also managed to see Irma. We were planning to go out to dance salsa, but apparently here people go out in couples and not alone. Of course, we could have been a couple, but it would have been nice to have a guy with us :) So, we stayed at her place, we had tea, smoked sheesha, had some food and went to bed. We both had/have a cold, different types if possible, and after a night in the same bed, we both felt much worse. Cross-infection... Then I'll be back to campus with my new Hungarian bacteria and infect others, haha.

Hello tourist!

This is the title of a funny-sweet Hungarian (well, well, it's in English, but with the best Hungarian accent) song by Emil!Rulez!, and this is how I sometimes feel when I come home after a couple of months. Like a tourist. Yesterday morning, the Hungarian words on the streets unsettled my ear. It was so weird to walk and hear Hungarian being spoken around me. I was staring at the beautiful, classisist buildings, realizing again and again how nicely monumental this city is. When you are back after so long, you see your surroundings through a different filter. It doesn't always feel very homely, except because I know where things are, where the roads lead and because I understand the signs.

But then, I got on the bus and I saw a couple kissing. Yes, yes, that kind of kissing. And it made me so incredibly happy. Welcome home! I always have the feeling that in this city, love is in the air. And on the streets and buses and metros and trams and everywhere. Bye-bye, the land of "be normal, that is crazy enough"... It should be the other way around: "be crazy; it's normal".

I have to say that I haven't been up to too much in the past couple of days. I went shopping with my mother several times. She usually has this urge that now that I home she needs to contribute to whatever I do, so I got some lovely new items into my wardrobe. Minus 11 kg do show, and now now I got the jeans to show them off :) But my favorite is the little red dress that I am going to wear tonight to the Gólyabál of the university department that I might transfer to. What is a Gólyabál?, you might ask. A Gólyabál is a ball, organized especially for the freshmen of the university, but usually the rest attends it too, and sometimes even strangers wander by (like me). It is a huge party, where the entrance is 3 euros for the students of the university and 5 euros for the guests, it's in the university building and there is a dresscode, which basically states "no jeans", but you would be absolutely ridiculous if you showed up in a Prom dress. I am trying to drag Sali along but he is resisting.

Ah, now I know why I haven't been up to that much. I was ill for two days. The usual after-the-exam-period-you're-gonna-get-sick sickness...

I did work a bit on all kinds of things though. GRE preparation, bar schedule, experiment (stupid sound files), university hunt, trying to figure out whether I could be accepted to here... stuff like this. Meanwhile, only because some of this required using a computer, I talked with people on MSN whom I haven't seen or talked to for ages. It's nice to catch up sometimes.

Tomorrow morning, I will assist (or direct) the electritian who's going to put up my lamps in my flat. It's going to be just soooo cool. I am almost looking forward to living here. Even though I was told by one of the salsa guys in Utrecht that the salsa scene is not that hot over here. There are plenty of alright people, but not real pros. Anyway, the flat with the lamps is going to look stunning and the kitchen is great, so all the major things are done. I'll still have to get rid of all the paper that the kitchen furniture was wrapped into. That is a massive amount of paper for a small kitchen!

And Sunday, I'll go to the rowing club of my father (or of the whole family, basically, I think he met both my mother and his new wife in that club, he starting rowing there as a young boy and he's been working there all his life, darn, he spent his whole life in that club!) to see a race. There's going to be a big party in the evening, and this is where I will come handy for my sister because my father is very protective of her, and now I'll just say that I will keep an eye on her. So, ultimately, I can set her free(-er). She's old enough to enjoy a party properly and she is a smart girl, even though she's in that stupid period where she falls in and out of love every second week. With different guys, of course. It's very entertaining to hear her stories. She was happy that I could go.

I still hope to see András, Varga Peti, Irma and Sali. I have lunch plans with Peti and András, and I'll see how the rest will work out. I still have to call Csaba too, and I just cannot get hold of my grandparents... Weird. I shouldn't forget to bring some sweet Hungarian paprika to Jinon.

Hope you're all well.

@ home

At home again. Travelling takes up the whole day. I'm so fed up with flying... The seats on the plane were the most uncomfortable possible. I was ambitious and took my GRE prep book on board, but it was the perfect fairy tale before going to sleep and I spent the rest of the time sleeping in the weirdest positions. /Gábor was listening to his iPod, wearing a Tommy Hilfiger shirt and carrying a Lacoste bag. / I am exhausted. The moment I saw my mother and her husband waiting for me, I had this horrible feeling that it will all start again. Tonight I said that I'll apply for both clinical psychology and cognitive neuroscience and if I get a good offer for cog sci and they (my parents) don't give me any money, I'll cope with it. They won't like it. Whatever.

Coffee

Just as I was thinking that I was going to get my *last* coffee this week - because now I've been seriously drinking too much of it - I had to find that I can't get free coffee in the breakrooms anymore... Not that it would be expensive otherwise, but I wouldn't overdose on it so much. So, in the spirit of health and saving money (because I've been printing hundreds of pages these days) I'll rely on other means to keep myself awake. 2 more exams and I'm done with the midterms. After midterms: no more chocolate, no more coffee, focusing on my thesis and preparing for the GREs. Oh, and break.

Work harder

I should have started reading these texts two days ago. Damn. But as my mother says: "Majd lesz valahogy; olyan még sosem volt, hogy sehogysem lett." (It will turn out somehow; it has never happened that it had not turned out in some way.) After all, she did teach me something...

Work hard, play hard

I promised myself that I wouldn't write till I got through chapter nine of the Psychology of Aging, an endless discussion of speed of processing and its relation to age. I have 3 more pages to go, so maybe I should finish before embarking upon a new note. (5 minutes later.) Ok, whatever, I'm tired of this. How can an author explain new theories in the summary of a chapter? I don't like complaining about books, but this one annoys the hell out of me. The two columns just make it worse. By the time you get through a sentence you are half a page lower. But at least there is a lovely study atmosphere in Voltaire. I discovered Last.fm as my new Pandora substitute in the group of internet radios, since you cannot listen to Radiocafé in the academic buldings. I don't like the new firewall settings.

Work hard, play hard. Recently, I've been doing both. I wasn't willing to give up dancing because of the midterms, and so far it seems that I'll make it. 3 more exams and then I'm done. (The Dutch grammar test was an A, which makes me happy because Dutch word order is the weirdest thing I ever had to develop a feeling for, and my Language Acquisition Device seems to be a bit rusty.) I've been chiefing like everybody else, I've been supervising some ETSI sessions, I've been reading and I've been hanging out with friends a bit too... I was chiefing at the Octoberfest on Friday, which was the best party in the bar this semester, even though it started slowly, and Wouter was also celebrating his birthday that night, so the bar was full of alumni. Literally, everybody was there. It really felt as if we went back in time. After my shift, I was dancing with Paul and Dávid the whole night till closing time. A wild night - I wish I had some pictures... :) I've also spent some time with Frerk; maybe I'll join in once again when they are playing poker in his unit.

I've been quite bad with e-mailing the past weeks - apologies to everybody. When the exams are over, I'll catch up with all of you. I'm looking forward to Thursday: two exams, then chiefing for the College Hall drinks and then salsa at Le Noir. I'll be a bit dead by Friday, but quite pleasantly, I'm sure.

Keep dancing!

New chiefs!

We initiated 3 new chiefs in the last couple of days: Fiona, Coosje and Max. It's always fun to do it - especially now, as BarCo. I cannot make the details public, but it's always some kind of prank, and this time it was a bit stressful but short at least :) And of course, it contained the compulsory ice pitchers! They all accepted their position and that was good to hear, as we were very much looking forward to getting the new chiefs to alleviate the strain on the chief group. 30 shifts per week with 16 chiefs is far too hard to handle. Now, with 19 of us (and soon 20, when Karin starts chiefing again) it will be much better. And I'm positive that they'll be good chiefs. I'll add some pictures later.

Something bad (laptop) and something good (Max's initiation) in a day - these kind of equal each other out. Plus two positive events: a short e-mail from Sali, which hardly ever comes, but it makes you appreciate it even more when it does, and an e-mail from Caro, who's now on exchange in England. She sent me the link to her blog and I read her posts - ah, I like her :) I put the link on the right under the "Blogs that I read" heading.

I'm now in Voltaire with the intention to study. Without a laptop I am again forced to move to Voltaire whenever I need a computer. I miss my music. And this time I actually did lose quite some files. Whatever, there were worse things that have been lost in the history of mankind.

The laptop is dead.

It is dead. I'll try to get Csaba take a look at it when I'm back at home.

A new soul for my laptop

My laptop has been braindead for the last couple of weeks. Every time I wanted to check my mail, work on an assignment or work on the schedule, I had to do something very healthy: walk to Voltaire and use one of the computers there. You might wonder now why it is healthier to sit in front of a computer in Voltaire than in my own room. Simply, because you spend less time doing it. Without a computer you cannot check your mail once again before going to bed, sit down to see who's on MSN or check out the new pictures on facebook. It's great. I did get some trouble with my e-mail, because checking twice per day is simply not enough when you get 50 messages per day, but I was handling it relatively well.

Now, thanks to ASB, my laptop has a new soul, an English one instead of the old Hungarian one, by Microsoft. (If Anne is right and there are angels around us, then mine must be ASB.) I think I managed to get all the files I need before the death of the previous operation system, so now I'm taking my time to copy everything back. Music, pictures, documents... Imagine a completely empty hard drive. Tabula rasa - it's kind of exciting :) The first thing I did was that I installed an antivirus program, after all not having one is like having sex with the whole world without using condoms, and then I got OpenOffice. Lovely. Skype and Messenger are to come.

This whole working laptop issue makes me quite happy. The installation went wrong 5 times, and I already had an Ubuntu CD on my table to be tried in the morning if the last one didn't work out either. So, it made my day. I'll soon have to move to Descartes to supervise the ETSI people and later during the afternoon I'll be tripsitting for my friends. By then, I'll print out a couple of articles for lifespan developmental psych and I'll bring along my concise Dutch grammar to prepare for my grammar test. Tomorrow is the day for programming my experiment and writing my assignment for psychology.

I'm so unstressed. Dancing does a lot of good to me. It's amazing how some exercise and fun can recharge your batteries.

Salsaddiction

Sunch a beautiful and sharp day this is. I went out dancing last night - I joined an advanced class at Trianon, danced till 23.30, had a drink till 1.30, biked home, had a shower, slept and woke up 5 minutes before 8 without needing my alarm clock to get me out of bed. Since then, I've been feeling great. Did literature search for my presentation, wrote stimulus sentences, did some work for ETSI (a bit), wrote some e-mails and I'm still feeling very focused. This is the time to get some work done.

My life is increasingly dominated by off-campus things, which give a new flavor to my time here. It's nice to have a social life outside the gates - usually the priviledge of Dutch students - and to see new faces. Especially latinos :) At the moment I'm not too interested in whether this is an escape mechanism or just a healthy, busy, balanced lifestyle. I'm enjoying it. Salsa is becoming more than an object of interest - an object of addiction. The music, the atmosphere of the parties, the moves, the exercise relax me and clear my head. You just let everything go, become one with the rhythm and let your partner guide you. Heaven.

Antwerp - Interspeech 2007

Here I am again, kind of deflating after the Bartenders' Weekend. I'm ill, I have a headache and I am utterly exhausted. And my laptop is dying. Poor thing.

I promised I would write a bit more about the conference. It definitely deserves more than the casual "it was great" commentary. It was really lovely though. I didn't expect it to be as tiring as it turned out to be - but hey, after all, the keynote of the day started at 9.30 and the last session ended at 18.00. After a day of reading posters and listening to presentations of course all your energy is gone. And you do this for 4 days. Plus the banquets. Bernat and I (and the rest of the students) seriously behaved like PhD comics characters. "Where's the food?" "Look, the food is coming, let's get closer."

I loved the keynote lectures in the morning. They were overviews of what was happening in a specific segment of the field. The demonstrations were nice to see too. One of the programs that was on display was a Spanish speech to Spanish sign language translator. So, I read out a sentence and the digital image of a guy started signing the equivalent. I found that pretty funky. Also, there was a singing sythesis program on display. You could enter the text that you wanted to hear and the notes (or you could play the notes on a keyboard) and the result was a voice singing the text in the specified notes. Very cool. I even heard a Hungarian synthesis program.

Our poster presentation went pretty well. We explained the project to around 35-40 people, which is quite good, I think. Fair enough, we were catching everybody who stopped to read the poster, but still, that's quite a number. The two hours went by fairly quickly after we got into the explanations and the mood. This is Bernat and I, standing in front of our poster:


I met loads of very nice people. Most of them complete nerds, but very nice ones. As a white female, I was definitely not part of the majority, so the setting was very different from that of UC. I spent quite some time with the Hungarians that I met - it was 25 of us, I think. We went out for lunch together and sat together at the reception the night before my birthday. I should write to them.

And shortly about the location: the building of the conference was absolutely stunning and it was right by the zoo where I spent most of my brakes. I loved the aquatic part of the zoo - it was beautiful and I didn't feel as sorry for the fish as for the rest of the animals. I could stand in front of one specific aquarium for half an hour, just staring at the fish. It reminded me of Egypt and I wished I could have plunged into the water with eyes open and see everything from even closer, while the water would have isolated me from the sreams of children running around. Everything was so beautiful and calm inside. My complete opposite.

Post-conference zombieness

First of all, thanks for the birthday wishes. Being 22 of course does not feel different from being 21, but at least if you vertically mirror the first 2, you'll get a heart and that's funky. No hidden significance, it's just funky. I'm fed up with guys anyway. No love, please. This last one was the perfect aversion therapy.

Resolutions? An extra minus 5 kilos, but I don't need a resolution for this, I'm working on it already and it's going to happen. Dancing as much as possible. Enrique, the owner of the salsa dance school in town is being extremely nice to me so this is easy to carry out too. Deciding what to study. Rebel? That would be the hard part.

I arrived back last night and I was showered immediately. I only had time to take my shoes, my glasses and my jacket off and Gijs already picked me up and was carrying me towards the shower. I only fought a bit, since it was a lost fight from the beginning. What could I have done against ASB, Bart and Gijs together? They were very sweet though. We had chicken wraps and by the end of the evening Eva, David and Emily joined too. A few of us went to the bar to dance a bit and I shared my birthday shot with Bart and Gijs. Later, I joined the bar bunch and we were dancing till about 3 or 4, when they decided they'd go swimming and I decided that would be too much for me after 5 days of sleep deprivation, 6 glasses of wine, a shot and a third of a birthday shot. After the shower - note: this was around 4.30 - I was talking to Igor (a guy I met via internet) on MSN and we figured we would meet today.

The conference was great! I'll write more about it later when I've copied the pictures and videos to my laptop.

"Small, fat and ugly." And this is not my opinion. And not even one person's opinion. How funny, seriously...

...

I haven't written in ages, I know... I feel low and extremely stressed today. I was wondering around the conference building and the zoo. This day shouldn't be like this. I'll be in Utrecht by the evening.

A new start

I should be writing e-mails to many of you but this time I'll just go for a simple short post.

Things are not going very well. The Sziget passed, some of it was very good, some of it was bad. It didn't depend on the Sziget itself, but things with Sali took some bad turns, probably due to the Sziget, but I just hope it will be alright in the end. I don't want to be on bad terms with him. It's an excruciating feeling to be in this situation. I understand what might be the underlying problem, but I hate to be treated this way. Things at home are also complicated. I'm continuously fighting with my mother and she and Béla bácsi have some pretty serious trouble. So, now my role is to confort her, even though half a day before the climax of their arguments she was insulting and mocking me. I think they'll divorce, it's been bad a couple of times but not this much. I feel sorry for her. It seems that bad luck with men runs in my family. It really does. I didn't manage to see all the friends I wanted to see. I dealt with the data for my thesis; and that looks alright, but it took ages and I hate it all. Tomorrow I'll get on a bus and travel for 22 hours to get to Utrecht. While having my period. How nice.

And there a new start will await me. I'll arrive there
- single
- 9 kilos lighter
- with glasses (I like them, I can finally see and they look fine)
- supposedly relaxed and charged with energy (no, probably not).

This has not been my year so far. Maybe from now on. But I'm tired.

A historical moment

Yesterday was the 0th day of the Sziget, the biggest summer music festival in Central Europe that has been organized every year for the past 15 years, and which happens to take place in Budapest on an island of the Danube (sziget means island in Hungarian). For the 15th anniversary, the organizers invited an old Hungarian band, LGT (or Locomotiv GT) to give the first concert of the festival the day before the event started. The "good-bye" concert LGT gave was 15 years ago... They wrote the songs that our parents were listening to in the 70's, many of which I was 20 years later singing in camps around the bonfire. No wonder the large area in front of the main stage was completely full. Most of the visitors were probably older than the average Szigeter and many of them brought their children along. It was a historical moment, indeed.

If I ever had the opportunity to record an emotion and then re-experience it, then one of my chosen moments would have been this concert and how I felt. Imagine thousands of people in the open air, singing together the songs that haven't been heard this way for ages and before then, when you could only enter a concert wearing a tie and when a red flag was naturally part of the stage. 50.000 lips were uttering the words at the same time and 50.000 hearts were beating at the same rhythm (especially because the vibrations from the drum could clearly be felt in the chest :). There was a general sense of belonging somewhere. So many people started to cry.

And of course, the members of the LGT are fantastic musicians. They had a great repetoir of songs and they kept their youthfulness and energy even though they are now in their fifties. The guy with the guitar was jumping all night long, which would have been a proper workout for a 20-year-old and he didn't seem to tire at all... One of the members played 7 instruments that night including the violin, the guitar, the flute, the drums, the mouth-organ and the saxophone. Most importantly, you could see that they all enjoyed playing. This is what we call örömzenélés, or happinessplaying.

The LGT played for more than 3 hours straight. They came back to the stage twice after the rhythmic "LGT" chants. They worked with several other musicians, but the last song was performed by only the 4 of them, and the audience, of course. They couldn't hide that they were touched by the moment. By the end, three of them were at the brink of tears. It was so beautiful.

Then and now:

And the 50.000 people on the Sziget. You won't spot me, I was at the front :)

(Photos by Ottó Kaiser and the Sziget crew.)

Im memoriam Walter

Rest in peace.

Monster

Yes, my mother proved it again. Well done. Well done. Congratulations. Do people enjoy acting like assholes with me? It seems so. I can take it for a while, it's fine. But at one point it gets too much.
.... you all.

And then I realized...

that I actually wanted to write about, or show, at least, something totally different. I spent last Wednesday in Amersfoort, where Máire organized a social gathering with a couple of friends of hers so that I could test them. We had food, I tested the girls, their sons were playing in the garden, it was such a pleasant day. That's where I also started to read the book about science. During my coffee break I was introduced to a site where they give you a personal profile based on your birthday and time of birth. I don't believe in horoscopes, but I thought it might be interesting to read what it says so I entered the information. (I don't believe in anything, in God, angels, destiny, predetermination or anything of the like. It's not so easy, you have to figure stuff out for yourself and people are not always very accepting.) This is what the site spit out. Feel free to comment if you think something really matches or if something is just so evidently off.

Sun in Virgo, Moon in Pisces
Although you have a real desire to serve others, your ideals are usually distant and consequently unreachable. A person with your introspective and highly emotional nature needs a stronger person to mold and contain this fluidity of character. To you, the abstract, the mystical, and spiritual are more real than any other realities. You are reflective and in touch with your subconscious, searching, probing, and exploring the labyrinths of the mind. Critical of yourself to the point of self-censure, however, you will hang a veil over what you have found in your soul.
Almost always you will find life difficult and will attempt to find release in mysticism or related subjects.
You must allow your Virgoan practical individuality to exert more force and tighten the reign on your actions. This is the key to a better balance and harmony in your nature.

Ascendant in Aries, Mars in the Sixth House
At the time of your birth the zodiacal sign of Aries was ascending in the horizon. Its ruler Mars is located in the sixth house.
Aries is the first sign of the zodiacal belt and its natives seem also desirous of being "first" in all activities with which they happen to be involved. The cardinality of the sign makes you extremely active and capable of displaying ambition, impulsiveness, courage, and boldness in order to satisfy your desire for prominence in the world.
The general course of your life will be filled with many 'ups' and 'downs' and changes conforming very much with the psychological nature of your temperament. Whether you triumph or not in life depends on your ability to develop your most positive inborn qualities and, simultaneously, exert some control over your less favorable characteristics, such as a lack of prudence, and a certain disregard for the feelings and opinions of others.
Aries gives a tendency for its natives to be inclined to politics and public work. You should be successful (or at least attempt to be so) in any work or activity that necessitates pioneering ideas and/or a militant disposition. You also appear to have an ardent attitude in any project that somehow or another involves new concepts or original work and in which you are given a position of leadership. One of your problems is that in your love for achievement in novel projects you tend to destroy old concepts and former contributions which would, perhaps, have been useful for your endeavors. Impulsive, critical, despising mean or dubious acts, you will create many excellent friendships but also important enemies. Your life is rich in passion and ardent love. In sexual matters you are quick, aggressive, and to the point. You also are a lover of pleasures, which you feel with a bright, open, and sparkling character.
Mars, the ruler of your life events, is found located in the sixth house. This location of Mars, is not altogether harmonious with the sign which it rules. The sixth house denotes subordination and limitations. Unfortunately, the more you resist these impositions of destiny, the more tied and bound to them you will find yourself. If you can view the naturally imposed limitations with perspective, the better and faster solution will come flowing throughout life as if magically produced.

Venus in the Fifth House
Venus was found in the fifth house at the time of your birth. At first glance this denotes rich, intense, and pleasant emotional events that will enhance your psychic nature. You are a person who could be regarded as fortunate in love and very successful. Whereas Venus grants the basic capability to reach full enjoyment from love and emotional involvements, it also indicates a tendency to be somewhat inconsistent, volatile, and changeable in romance. Although you are capable of loving intensely and with devotion, the tendencies are to lose interest after a certain time. You would be in a better position if you could exert some control over your span of interest.

Sun in the Sixth House
The Sun was found in your sixth house at the time of birth. This position indicates that in all your activities you will be subjected to the impositions of the environment. The overall orientation of your existence is that of accomplishment through fulfillment of professional responsibilities. In matters of health, this astrological combination is not ideal, as the vital energies of the Sun here have less power, causing you to feel an occasional lack of physical strength. You are, however, inclined to be careful with your health. In your dealings with work associates and subordinates you will show dignified, strong, but open- handed attitudes.
You work with a well-developed sense of pride in everything you do.

Saturn in the Eighth House
Saturn was found in the eighth house at the time of birth. Because of the restraining influence of this planet, matters concerning legacies, inheritance, and the financial dealings of your partner or associates could be severely limited and may be frustrated by what seems to be harsh fate.
Psychologically you are rather serious in connection with sexual affairs. You approach sex with caution, rationality and planning. Excess reason and thought in this direction may create some frustration in sexual matters.
Note: Saturn is technically near the end of house 7 and is therefore interpreted in house 8.

Moon in the Twelfth House
The Moon was in your twelfth house at the time of birth. Secretly, you enjoy a love of romance and adventure that lends a bit of excitement to your daydreaming.
It is possible that the little popularity that you may enjoy in this life will be from some very reserved and secretive circles where your merits are recognized.
It can be expected that you will be successful in positions that call for solitude or remote locations.

Late night procrastination

I'm paying the price for the recent late nights: I'm unable to fall asleep before 2 or so. I read about another hundred pages of A Short History of Almost Everything and was just as puzzled over the miracles of this planet and life as on the first 250 pages. This book opens your eyes to the complexity of our world. It's stunning. No wonder it didn't make me fall asleep. Next step: check e-mails. 6 new mails, mostly through facebook, people commenting on old photos, and Kata, an old classmate of mine writing that she would like to meet up. See, it was good to send out that e-mail. Next step: facebook. I mean, I had to check the comments on the photos anyway :) They were hillarious. Some of the worst pictures in my life; I don't know how some people have the heart to put those on public display. Ok, since this picture is up there anyway, here you go:

We look like a bunch of hippies... This is the core of the YB group, which I was the general editor of. The guy on the left, Aleks, looks generally scary. I look like a rainbow, it's seriously embarrassing, but it was 3 years ago, I must be forgiven. Furthermore, you can't see my eyes, which always happens when I smile, because I start to look Asian. No idea why. Maybe I shouldn't smile. Eduardo just looks cool and casual. The discussion started about Swathi's clothes (the girl in the long skirt) and how wonderfully unmatching every single piece of clothing is on her :) Laura (very right) then commented on everybody else, including her own pink flipflops. Ah, good times. From facebook to Youtube. Initially, because I remembered that I asked Laurens to upload a couple of videos that we made when we were in Houten, enjoying the playground. They are so funny. Here is a sample. (I got the trousers from his mom, since I was completely soaked by the time we got there... by bike, remember?)

Naturally, when you're on Youtube, you start clicking around randomly. Well, I do, but that gets boring, so I started to expand my collection of dance videos. And now, since zouk and bachata are the dances that I encountered most recently, and to educate you on latin dances, here are my favorite videos of them. The first is a video of zouk, a dance I can absolutely not dance, but I believe it all depends on trying. It is starred by Max and Larissa (I'm mentioning the names because they have dozens of videos on Youtube) at the 2007 Zouk-Lambada Congress. They are amazing. (Don't be surprised by all the hair flowing around, it seems to be an important part. I usually don't like sexist things, and in zouk a woman is everything but strong, but the way she's made rely on the man is quite sensual.) The second video is a bachata. According to Raja, bachata is romantic, but I somehow cannot find anything with so much ass wiggling romantic. You decide. The guy is great and the girl is not bad, and I like her energy in any case, so here you go, enjoy!

Bye Utrecht! - Hello Budapest!

I couldn't have imagined that these three weeks would pass by so quickly. Something that started out as a hassle became a great couple of weeks! I was looking for participants and I found friends. I explored a part of the dance scene in Utrecht and started to get to enjoy bachata and zouk. I found people who love latin dancing and are extremely good at it and from whom I could learn a lot. I've been to yet another gay party, this time at the Ritz and had a blast. I just love gay guys. I went to Amersfoort to test 4 expat women from Britain and had a very nice day with them. I started exercising. I met friends from UC; Britt, Nicole, Laurens, Gijs, Bart, had food, danced or enjoyed the playground. I started to read A Short History of Almost Everything, a book about science and I love it. It gives you the kind of satisfaction you get from being very sleepy but just being unable to put the book down.

To summarize, I managed to get my data while having such a good time. :) So, contrary to what I said earlier, please do not hit me if I'm planning to do something like this again.

Now, I'll have three weeks to spend in Budapest. I arrived last night, saw Sali already and I'm hoping to see many other friends later these days (of those who remained after 4 years...). I sent out an e-mail today, and it already seems sure that I'll meet András, my 6th year, and Varga Peti, another good friend of mine who is also an ex-UWCer. I'll get my kitchen assembled (it's standing in boxes now in the "kitchen") and then my flat will be almost ready!

There is life outside campus :)

UC is such a convenient bubble. We have everything there: food, friends, the bar, a small gym... No wonder we hardly ever go off campus. And even if we do, that's usually limited to the Albert Hein and to a couple of parties maybe. After two years in the Netherlands, my experience of Utrecht is severely limited... and it's time to change this!

I met a lot of lovely people in the last couple of days. The first group I got to know includes quite some Eastern Europeans and they are all Elspeth's friends. I had this cool idea one evening that I should drop by the Irish pub to find participants for my experiment. After all, there must be some English, Irish, American etc. people hanging out around there. I sat down by the bar, drinking my orange juice and in a couple of minutes I saw Elspeth, my (Joram's, to be precise) ex-unitmate. We started talking and she introduced me to her friends. It's a very international bunch and it even includes a Hungarian guy from Transylvania. They all looked very open and friendly, and I think I'll meet them again in the future.

I found the second group, another group of international people, on the Internet. I was following a couple of links from a website for expats and the links led to a yahoo group. I joined and in a day there were e-mails sent around about having a drink at Havana. Europe, North-America, Latin-America, Asia and Australia are for sure represented in the group :) We had a nice conversation and a couple of drinks. I was talking to a Venezuelan guy and we were discussing the music of JLG and the latinos is general. That evening, I really started to miss Gregory and Laura, the rest of the little latino community at UC and the latino nights at Sosh.

So, I was looking for participants for my experiment and I found friends. Pretty good, eh?

The highlights of the past days were then the following:
1. Laurens, Gijs and Bart dropping by my place without notifying me in advance. I actually thought that I forgot a participant. It was a nice surprise. :) We were having dinner together.
2. The day after, Gijs and I biked to Houten and back (in the rain!!!) to spend the afternoon at Laurens' place. It was my first "long distance" (well, long enough for me) biking, and by the time we got there, we were totally soaked. Still, we enjoyed the pleasures of the playground behind Laurens' house. If he manages to upload the videos to Youtube, I'll link them in. We act like 10-year-olds.
3. The same evening, I went out dancing with Elspeth and a Zimbabwean friend of hers. We started at the Neude and we were doing some bar hopping around the centre of town. We were quite a sight: three girls who were actually dancing. I got the impression from that night that Dutch people don't go out to dance but to hang around and check out the rest. I definitely go out to dance. We had some inconveniences from a couple of guys at almost all of the places, so even though the dancing was great, I had a sense of disppointment when I finally got home.
4. The day after, Britt came over for a bit in the afternoon. For the evening, I invited Laurens and Nicole over for a drink. Later, Laurens went to a concert by his friends, and Nicole and I went to the PANNfeest. People really go there to dance and to have a good time and nobody is pushy or aggressive. And watching guys singing along with the tracks by Madonna or Cher still makes me smile. :) The whole event has a very nice atmosphere.
5. The day after that, so yesterday, I found out that there was a salsa party at the Trianon in the evening, and since so far it has always worked out whenever I went out, I decided to go. Raja, an Indian guy in the group that I joined gave me his number because he was planning to be there too. He is a very good dancer - much better than I am - but I think we still managed to have a good time on the dancefloor. Some of the people dancing there were very impressive, especially technically. I was just standing there, staring. Now I know what the aim is :) On the other hand, there were loads of people around who knew fancy steps and turns, but who didn't even smile. I prefer those people who might not be so advanced technically, but who radiate how much they enjoy what they are doing.

This coming year, I'm soooo going to spend more time off campus with people from other places!

Ah, and I've been testing people too... Just as a side note.

Honors Thesis blues

Please hit me if I ever want to do something like this again.

For those of you not from UC, let me explain what the concept of an Honors Thesis is. Every student is required to do a Research Project, which is a 300 level course (advanced level) and which is an individual research that you write up. There are pretty big differences between Research Projects in different departments and fields, but the one I decided to do consisted of an experiment and a report in the form of a journal article. An Honors Thesis is something that you can decide to do but you're really not obliged. It's a 400 level course (the only 400 level you can take), you take it as an extra course in your curriculum and it's like a Research Project but bigger. I'll tell you a secret: actually, no one really knows what the difference is between the two.

So, I'm here to do my Honors Thesis. I arrived to Utrecht a bit more than a week ago, then took a couple of days to socialize, a couple of days to cope with motivational issues and a couple of days to work really hard on the stimuli for my experiments and on the experiments themselves. /While I'm writing this, my sister is distracting me on messenger, asking for advice on her love issues. Somehow I don't feel like an authority in this, especially not now, but it's sweet. I'm re-experiecing the time when I was 15. It's just that I never had anyone to ask.../ I'm creating three experiments, which are supposed to test the stimuli and which will hopefully lead to the main test, a cross modal lexical priming (CMLP) experiment, which I will run when I'm back at UC.

Right now, I'm seriously doubting whether I'll have enough people to test around here. Only one person replied of all the contacts that Jocelyn and Frank gave me. I'm trying to contact people who might still be around, but it still looks rather hopeless. The worst thing is that I realized what I should have done. I should have stayed at home to make the experiments (which would have also enabled me to spend more time with my friends) and I should have gone to London for a week with my laptop. I know at least 10 people in that city who could have housed me, I could have enjoyed the city and I could have tested more than enough people very easily. And now I'm here suffering with getting enough participants... Grr.

Furthermore, two days ago I realized that I didn't pay attention to something that Frank didn't point out either. It's an aspect of the original stimuli that could have easily been tested in my Research Project (oh, yes, my Honors Thesis is the continuation of my Research Project) but now I had to change the stimuli just to accomodate for that, which made the 3 tests altogether 67 minutes, which is far too long. So now I either have to test more people with less stimuli in a Latin Square type of system or I have to pray that people will actually be able to complete the full hour of testing. The first option doesn't seem very reasonable to me because I'm lacking subjects already. So, it will be the second...

If you are, by any chance, a native English speaker residing in the Netherlands, and willing to participate, please contact me! 0625373815. You'll be my hero.

Forgot...

I forgot to mention but I think it's quite evident: I redressed my blog! Do you like the picture? Any complaints? (Suicide notes?) That's what I saw from my unit's balcony for a semester. The view from my own window was more depressing but this scenery made up for that.

This has been a pretty productive day, by the way :) And it's not over yet...

A virtual life

I've been living somewhat of a virtual life the past couple of days. Since I have been working on the stimuli for my experiments (and I've been taking my time, but now they are finally done...) my laptop was on all the time, and what do you start doing when you are connected to the virtual space of the www? You start searching it, browsing it, writing it and talking to people online. So, my stay here started very actively with the visit to Bennekom, seeing Joram's family, going to Roel's party, having Kristina and Gijs over, going to the Hague and then having Andrea and Will here, and now I'm once again pretty much closed into the bubble of the web.

I've been mostly talking to Sali (who is always busy fund raising for BEST), Dávid (who is actually a friend through the net - we only met once and that was one and a half years after our first conversation - and he's also doing research, but in physics), Kiss Gergely (who would be Gergely Kiss in English, and no, kiss does not mean kiss, it means small, and he's my 4th year in AC, absolutely sweet, always supportive and he was left by his girlfriend too), Jamal (a friend from AC who might visit me in Budapest when I'm back) and Szekér András (again, András Szekér, but the names of these people become iconic in their full state, and we were discussing relationships, of course). Irma is always too busy and Joram is either too much involved in whatever he is doing or he blocked me from his contacts once again. This week, the highlight of my virtual existence was creating a facebook profile for Walter, the cat I'm taking care of... You can imagine. It's actually kind of cute.

To keep my real life going I invited Frank and Jocelyn over for dinner for Sunday, Rosemary for Monday, and Britt is also coming at some point the week after. Everybody, come over for dinner! Or tea! I hope I can find some people with whom I can go to the PANN next weekend.

Well, these are quite conscious cries for company. It is a bit lonely here. Walter doesn't talk much and he's sleeping half the time. Yesterday was the lowest point in the week and today is already a bit better. Could PMS stand for Post-MS?

A small Sunley 2005 reunion

Andrea, who was my roommate (or dormie, as we used to say in AC) for two years, contacted me a while ago about her travels through Europe. She has always wanted to see me in Budapest but this time she didn't have the time, and so we had to arrange a randez-vous in the Netherlands. We had a friendship that definitely had its ups and downs. In the first semester, we were hanging out and talking a lot, and maybe because we spent so much time together or maybe because of my depressed mood in the second semester, by the end of the first year, we didn't talk at all, even though we shared a room. We couldn't communicate. The tension erupted at the dorm meeting at the end of the year, where the four inhabitants of the dorm decided to split up into two dorms, with Sophie and Brittany in one room and Andrea and I in the other. It wasn't a choice of Andrea or me, but we had to accept it and at least we claimed our old room on the first floor of the house with a nice view of the woods and the sea. The second year we were good again and I still remember the moment when she found me in the crowd to say good-bye in front of the bus I was leaving on... It's one of those pictures and feelings that is burnt into my memory.

The time Andrea spent in the Netherlands conveniently coincided with Will's visit. Will also lived in Sunley and we were very good friends, especially in the first year. I actually heard rumours that we were going out but that was not something we were aware of :) We did spend a lot of time together though. In the first months, I shared with him all the stress of leaving my home behind. It was a very hard period; I didn't even speak English properly yet. He was my first friend at AC.

Given that Andrea stayed at Jo's place in den Haag, I decided to go and see her there. It would have been very silly to miss her when she was finally in Europe. (She's Mexican and she's studying in the US.) I met Andrea and Jo at the train station in the Hague and we picked up Will some time later. It was quite a task: Will had long and wavy red hair in AC, but we knew that he had cut it, so the big orange cue was gone. Furthermore, we didn't know which train he took, from where he was coming and at what time exactly he was supposed to arrive. We figured we would surprise him and since he didn't know I was going to be there, when we saw him approaching, I "accidentally" ran into him. The surprise worked very well :)

The four of us, all Sunley graduates of 2005, spent a very nice evening together. It felt as if nothing had changed. Time continued from when we were still in AC, everything was the same, only the setting was different. That evening, I thought that I could go back to AC and live there again with these people. It was funny how everybody looked a bit older. Of course, an obvious sign of passing time, but you don't realize it when you look at yourself in the mirror. Looking at us, I had to conclude we grew up.

That evening I made poffertjes (I hope that's how you spell it), small Dutch pancakes, which we had with Nutella and Ben & Jerry's. They were yummy. We were sitting in the kitchen of a huge house, talking about the old times, the present and the future and we were gossiping in the company of some bottles of beer, a bottle of wine (which I finished myself) and some cigarettes till late at night. I think that was when I convinced Andrea and Will to come over to Utrecht to check out the city and our campus.

So, that was what we did yesterday. We had brunch at Jocelyn's place, walked around the inner city a bit, went to see campus and had coffee back in the city. We said good-bye with a warm hug at the train station and with the hope that we will see each other soon. I definitely have a place to stay in Edinbourgh and next year I might do a trip of Britain, visiting old friends from AC.

Back in Utrecht

Smooth jazz, pear tea, stimulus lists, cat-sitting, cold: I'm back in Utrecht.

The way here was somewhat adventurous. I asked Sali to bring me to the airport because my mother was busy at a meeting. He arrived a bit after 8 in the morning to pick me up, not really hungover but still drunk after the pubcrawl he was organizing for the Spanish. To help him drive so that we would both survive, I took an active part in driving, saying mainly "break!", "red light", "slower" or "change lines". We made it :) He's amazing. I hope he made it back too without getting into trouble or hurting himself.

Of course, the flight was delayed again, but only for about an hour. I started a conversation with the guy sitting next to me in the lounge (Péter) and we continued talking until we got to the train station where we had to take different trains. He is also studying in the Netherlands, he has lived in Hungary most of his life, but he is of Bulgarian origins. We discussed living abroad and how hard it is to keep in touch with people at home. and how we hate travelling back and forth between home and home. He shared my dislike of fraternities and sororities and we analysed how different Dutch mentality is from Hungarian mentality. The most intriguing was maybe that we felt that money is somehow more central here, even though our countries are much poorer. Just think of the lists of unit expenses (given to the cent accuracy) on the fridge. Think of people whose parents would like the person's girlfriend to pay rent just because she would sometimes sleep over. Think of guys who give their parents the money they spent on gasoline when they brought them to the airport. This would be such nonsense at home.

I was completely exhausted by the time I got to Jocelyn's place. I fell asleep on the train and I was lucky enough to wake up when they said Utrecht Centraal. I dragged myself and my luggage through Utrecht. The first thing I needed was a shower (and a sleep, but I didn't get that yet)... yes, I very much needed that shower. Christel, Jocelyn and I had dinner at home, and even though it was Jocelyn's birthday, she had to suffer from an ear infection. It's a painful thing, I remember. I hope it will be better soon. We still went to a short and small jazz concert which was very nice and where Frank was playing the piano. (He's a pretty cool guy. Is there a younger edition around?) Then I slept completely unconsciously until 10 this morning.

My plans for now are to meet Andrea, my Mexican ex-roomie from AC who's apparently in the city today with Jo, to go to Roel's party on Sunday and start working on the stimuli. I actually started that already. Is there anyone who would like to meet up?

A short holiday in Budapest

There should be a post here about the very last days at UC, an account of the ASIC barbecue, the packing that lasted for 3 days, the 50 cent party and the rush to the airport. It's kind of late to write about that though. You'll have to be satisfied with the following two short videos that I took after the 50 cent party at 5.30 am in front of the Bar.





And now? I'm in Budapest. I'm trying not to sleep at home as much as possible, because I have better places to sleep at and because I've had enough of my mother already. She's driving me mad with her way of controlling everybody around her. Well, mainly me.

Reconstruction is the main theme of my life in these two weeks.

- My room was painted, I threw out half the furniture and the "stuff" in my room, and I built a new wardrobe (all alone).

- I had a haircut. I haven't had my hair this short since I was 13.

- I started a diet and I'm losing weight.

- I organized stuff that I'm emotionally attached to into a scrapbook.

- I finally decided to have my eyes checked again. Now, I'm looking for the right glasses.

- I'm getting massages and other types of treatment that makes me suffer but will apparently help in getting back to my old shape.

- I bought a substantial part of the new kitchen from IKEA. It's now in pieces and boxes, standing in my flat.

I'm spending a lot of time with Sali, especially when he's not busy with the Spanish group that is visiting the organization that he's involved in. We can give each other exactly what we need. And I even got to see Irma a couple of times, even though she's working and hardly has a minute. So, it's all good here. Soon I'll leave for Utrecht again...

The last days at UC

I haven't been writing lately, I know... There are still a lot of things on my mind about the recent events; things that I have to figure out or come to terms with. Nevertheless, the last week at UC was quite nice. Even though I had too much time because I didn't actually HAVE TO do anything and I thought that if I don't have to things to do, I'll just sink into a horrible horrible depressed mood. I didn't. Even though I did have to go through some things that didn't make me very happy.

Cat-sitting for Jocelyn
Jocelyn is a tutor who said that I could stay at her place in July if I take care of her old ill cat. A very good deal. So, I went over for dinner to talk to her about it (and very conveniently Frank was there too, so we could plan ahead) and to meet Walter. I spent the weekend after this dinner cat-sitting. Walter is not much different from my dog, he is moving quite slowly and he loves to get attention. So, I was there typing an e-mail and Walter would poke my leg with his paw to get on my lap. I thought that putting him on the table and petting him with my left hand while typing with my right would be a reasonable concession on such a warm day, but eventually he started to poke my shoulder with his paw this time. As if he would be saying "pleeeeease", and so I said "alright". This is almost exactly how my dog does the same.

Free time
After sending in my files to Hinze to finish my lab couse, I had a sense of freedom. For the first time in I don't know how long, I had free time. I saw three movies in three consecutive days: The Dreamers with Paul and Laurens, Dogville with Fede and his Canadian first year from his UWC and Elizabethtown with the whole gang. I also had dinner with Paul and Laurens once after a whole afternoon of hanging out doing nothing. See "nothing" below.


Paul and his ringtone act


Laurens attempting to do the ringtone act

Seeing Joram's family
I had to pack everything that was Joram's in the unit, which was quite a task. Books, cutlery, a vacuum cleaner, drying racks, a laundry bag, a mixer, a water boiler, a teakettle, CDs, his computer, his slippers and some other bigger and smaller items spread out in the whole place. I was literally cleaning him out of my life. Well, at least from my space. Anne, his mother, picked everything up and also took me along to Bennekom so I could say good-bye to the whole family. I hate to say good-bye. It drives me nuts. Is there a way to go out with Joram's family instead of going out with him?

I had a very long conversation with Anne and Jurrien, Joram's father, during the night. We sat in the garden and talked for 4 hours. I felt a bit guilty for keeping Anne awake for so long, and as it turned out, also Jurrien, because although he went to bed earlier, he kept the window open... The day after I felt very depressed. All the questions were asked, and no one had the answers. Maybe I expected them to do, but they were just as puzzled as I was, and this gave me an even worse sense of hopelessness. The fact that I knew I was leaving in a couple of hours didn't help me feel better either. Two hours left, one hour left, half an hour left...

Anne's graduation party
And then, there was the graduation party that Anne and Mauro threw in Ermelo on the afternoon of the day I had to leave Bennekom. I must have been a sad sight at the train station in Amersfoort, sitting on a bench alone, crying, waiting for a train that has been delayed. But it all got much better during the party. I was dancing with Mauro, talking with a lot of people and drinking wine&coke (VBK, for all the Hungarians) and Bailey's. The way home was one of the highlights of the evening. The guys brought some booze on the train and then engaged in a funny conversation with an NS worker. See it for yourself:


The general atmosphere


Bernat hiding in the toilet


And the funniest one...

Nice IV - Pictures!

Bernat taking a picture...


Can you hear the camera? And Bernat?

Nice from the top of the mountain.

Barnat loving the jasmins.

Alberto :)

Coffee break!

Note the clear indication of where the coffee breaks take place.

All of us...

The meeting room and the team minus Mike and me.

Still in the meeting room. Bernat titled this picture "Desperation".

Bored...

Me working very hard...

Bernat working very hard...

Nice III

The meetings
There is actually not much to say about the meetings apart from that they were extremely long and sometimes quite boring. The sexual relationships with ants contibuted much to the atmosphere... I haven't seen such inefficiency for a long time, but what had to be done was done eventually. The coffee breaks were essential parts of the meetings and despite the huge red signs saying "FOOD AND DRINKS ARE NOT ALLOWED IN THE MEETING ROOMS", the bin was filled with coffee cups very quickly.

Not-so-skinny-but-almost dipping
So, after the first day of meetings we all went out to a picturesque town for dinner. I thought that these places only exist in fairy tales. It was beautiful. It had everything you would imagine about a small village in the South of France, the hill, the little houses, the stairs leading up, narrow streets, pots, flowers and plants everywhere... Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me. At dinner, Bernat proved that he can eat amazing amounts of food and had two pizzas. As for me, not so accidentally, I drank enough wine to feel better.

Rosemary, Bernat, Mike and I got a ride to the train station, where we found that the last train was supposed to leave at 23 45, which meant that we had some time to walk around. Rosemary showed the way to the beach. The moment we got there, I knew we'd end up in the water. Bernat was the first one to jump in. Then Rosemary. I was standing on the beach next to Mike, the team leader, contemplating whether I should join Rosemary and Bernat who were happily swimming around, or stay on the shore because I was sick already. I figured that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and that I was sick already (i.e. it was bad enough and feeling a bit worse wouldn't have make so much of a difference), and I started to undress. Did I mention that we didn't have swimming gear or towels? :) The water was great. Walking out of the water in a wet T-shirt and a thong, and dressing up were quite an experience. Then Bernat thought he lost his sunglasses and I thought I lost my thong. Yeah, it was interesting... At least I had a skirt on. Evetually, we found them both.

Then we headed towards the international bar, where we consumed some more wine in a very nice atmosphere. We realized it too late that we should be leaving and since we knew that we wouldn't make the train anyway, we walked around a bit more and ended up in another bar with another bottle of wine... I'm afraid I don't remember much of the conversation apart from how brilliant it was. We took a taxi back to Nice, climbed up the drunken stairs (all the stairs are a bit tilted toward the middle of the staircase), which now felt less drunken than usually, and we sat in the living room for a while just before going to bed.

Such a nice evening! Are all research meetings/conferences like this? :) (I was told this was not the case....)

The evening of Rosemary taking us out for dinner, sitting on the beach looking for the smallest pebble and Bernat inventing a new sport
The last evening Rosemary was there, she took us out for dinner to a very nice restaurant in town. The food was delicious. I thought that the French give tiny portions of food, but I was almost full by the time I finished my (and a part of Rosemary's and Bernat's) starter. It was a long and lovely evening of story telling. We were sitting there on the beach after dinner, the three of us between all the couples, and we were telling are little stories. Rosemary has the best ones. Bernat invented a new sport: throwing a large pebble in the air above the sea and throwing another one which has to hit the first one. It's extremely difficult to do. Bernat and I were trying very hard and Rosemary was just laughing. The couple closest to us started to do it as well, so maybe we did create a new game in Nice. At one point I gave up and suggested that this sport should be included in the standard UC selection procedure. If somebody gives up too early, then they won't make it here. If somebody keeps on doing it until they manage, they'll make it but they are insane. Well, Bernat did make it (not to say that he's insane but that he's very gifted in throwing pebbles) and then we started to dig holes next to us, going deeper and deeper, looking for the smallest pebble that we could find. (We're so not grown-ups and it feels so good!)

The last day: naps and the city
Rosemary had to leave early in the morning, but our plane only left in the evening, so we had a day to explore the city. The first time I woke up was at 9. I had a shower, had some muesli and went back to sleep. Then, we both woke up at 11. Well, I woke up and I woke Bernat up to be precise. We had brunch. We decided to have a nap. We woke up at 13.30... It was really time to start our day. No excuses any more. We packed some of our stuff and left for the city, Bernat armed with his camera and me armed with some money for shopping. I tolerated Bernat's obsession with taking pictures (which I share, but I didn't bring my camera) and he tolerated me walking in and out some boutiques and spending 20 minutes in a bijoux shop called Nirvana. The name was good; that place was heaven for me. On the way back, we walked by the rocks at the end of the beach where some boys were jumping in the water. Bernat spent 20 minutes making 3 photos there. They better be good.

We finished packing, cleaned up a bit, arranged the money with Nathalie and left. Since we had some time to catch the bus, we went to a small pub and had a drink. We almost missed the bus to the airport :) You know the story from here. The plane was delayed and so was the train. When I got home I passed out on my bed immediately.