Time seems to be passing really quickly. Friday has marked the end of 7 months that I've been living here. I don't think I'm settled down yet though - I think that will come once I move into an apartment that I can start modding - you know, a couple of case fans, those blue light things, a great big window in one of the walls, a big-arse water cooling solution and an LED/LCD thing for an always-on email checker (I'm semi-serious about that last one actually).

This last month has been relatively expensive, as I hovered perilously close to using up my entire paycheque from Christmas. This puts a huge dampener on my plans to start shelling out for some new geeky goods such as a NSLU2, a new portable hard-drive thing, and a messenger bag (Crumplers seem to be the best ones). Not only that, but the battery seems to have a terminal disease on my laptop, and I need to start saving for the purchase of the new laptop in June/July (that is as long as Apple hold up their end of the bargain and both release and ship new Powerbooks by then).

So as you can see, it's all getting quite expensive. Now, to try and handle this expense, my plan is to just start cutting back on various bits and pieces, and look for other money-saving things I can do. The reality of the situation is that I really shouldn't have to though. It's no secret that PhD students are poorly paid, but they are uniformly poorly paid - there are no monetary incentives to join a particular lab, and you are not financially rewarded for having good qualifications. The exception to the rule is that the system in Germany pays older students more money. The end result of all of this is that there is an egalitarian system for remunerating PhD students - they're all the same in the eyes of the bean counters. This system works really well for the university, since there's an infinite supply of potential PhD students coming out from the sciences, and one potential PhD student can be simply replaced by another. The reason supply is so strong is that the minimum qualification for working in the sciences nowadays is the PhD, and progress without a PhD will be difficult, or close to impossible. For potential PhD candidates to find the best deal for a PhD, they are essentially driven to shop between countries. This might not be an option for many reasons (the least of which is that you really shouldn't be doing a PhD without a nearby established support network - yeah I know, I realise this now). Since you're not going to find a PhD student who's doing a degree for the money, PhDs get their motivation to continue their work from two places - a desire to establish a career in research as a means of gaining income (eventually), and the love of science. Both fine, but they're not exactly putting food on the plate. I sort of hope this model of enticing PhD students to study is going to break down in the future.

Historically, a career in academic research was seen as more flexible and free than working in a commercial industry, and so science was seen as a way for people to make a living doing what they love. Industry - by contrast, was the intellectual equivalent of the old rock sell-out - running for the money and in the process damning your soul to a lifetime of slavery to the machine. Real dire stuff indeed. Google is changing that perception very quickly however. Although a lot of their jobs require PhDs, it's proof conclusive that you can do innovative research in a commercial company without selling your soul - and not only that, but there's a business model which can actually sustain it. In fact - and this holds true for the computer science field at least - there are a number of both start-up and established companies who have research divisions, although it is a matter of time to see if their business models are as sustainable as Google's. So now (at least for computing based PhD students) there's a viable choice for a PhD candidate outside of academia. Within the biotech space, I don't see too many options available for doing commercial research in an environment like Google's - pharmaceutical companies are notorious for being quite evil to work for. Regardless, when you do the comparison between having a career based in places like Google, and the possible benefits of a career in academia, the commercial based career wins overwhelmingly. In fact, it seems to me that most people try to get out of science and into industry as fast as possible once they finish their PhDs. Why don't they just skip the PhD and go straight into industry?

Now we have companies like Google establishing an attractive marketplace for research-minded people to find a job in, what will universities do to respond? If they don't do anything, will smart people still enrol in the PhD programs? The universities are no longer the only place where people can indulge in some intellectual flights of fantasy, and now must compete with institutions that offer both better financial rewards, but better environments and lifestyles than they currently offer. Institutions like universities are notoriously slow to change - and any change in things like increasing base remuneration packages for PhD students will take years (if not a decade) to come into effect. That doesn't even take into account the lack of money that the universities have to pay the PhD students. It seems to me that the universities will need to find a new way to compete with these companies in a fight to attract the best and brightest minds to the world of science. Okay, it's true that the best and brightest will probably always go to university - but I'm thinking more about the really good, and the pretty damn bright, who will no doubt will be asking questions such as "What can you provide me that Google can't?". I look forward to the communities response.

I never really appreciated history, as a general concept. I think it had something to do with the fact that there is just so much of it, and I didn't really know how to go about getting my head around it. Where do you start? Yesterday? The beginning of time? What do you do with all those really dull bits that happened while we were crawling out of the sea? It feels a bit wrong to wipe out several billion years of history like that as I'm sure something interesting must have happened in that time period. Things like alien landings. The alien landings only muddy the waters though, as you need to find a place for all the histories of all those other planets out there. I just keep getting the feeling that I'm learning about a English Premiere League highlights package version of history. Even if you only pick up the important bits, you still have far too much history for any one person to comprehend.

Travelling seems to have made me change my opinion on history. My earlier attempts at travelling and broadening the mind just really involved rocking up into a country, woefully under-prepared, and seeing just exactly what is going to surprise you. While that method is really good for discovering things, and managing expectations (If you don't expect anything from a place, you can't be disappointed by it - notably excepted by Karlsruhe), you really miss out on an important aspect about actually visiting the place, which is actually being at the place. If you spend a few weeks reading about a place, and then finally actually get there, and see the place - smell the air, touch the buildings, walk the streets, it takes it from an abstract idea and makes it real. Since I have not learnt a thing, and still don't do any preparation for my trips, I usually make up for it by browsing the Wikipedia pages for the places I have visited and hoping that I haven't missed anything significant.

Coupled with my proximity to many old things, my reading of the Baroque cycle by Neal Stephenson has really made me interested in history and genealogy. One of the things I like the most about the books are the locales in which they're set, and how they seem strangely relevant to me with significant mention made of places I have personal connections to - London, Heidelberg and Ahmedabad. The characters in the book basically travel all over the world, happening to show up at significant points in history, interacting with the royalty and the savants of the time (Newton, Leibniz etc). Although the events in the book are largely fictionalised, it still drives you to read more about the events, and the machinations of the 17th and 18th centuries. It was a very interesting time, from the development of natural sciences and chemistry, to waging wars and political wrangling (the rise of the nation state during the age of enlightenment), and even the establishment of the modern systems of commerce that we still see in place today.

On Thursday night, I joined up with some Bulgarians and went to watch a Bulgarian film about the establishment of homeland for the Bulgarian people. It was quite an interesting story, although it was a bit hard to follow the dubbed English. The Bulgars (of Turkic ethnicity) were basically getting hammered in battles with other tribes, and had to leave their homeland - splitting up their nation into three tribes who spread out over continental Europe. The highlight in the film would have to be the massive battle scene where they hired 50,000 extras as soldiers. The wikipedia page on the history of Bulgaria probably does a better job at describing the history than I will ever be able to paraphrase. The coolest thing I found out about Bulgaria though (apart from the fact that the Bulgars were awesome equestrians - think of a skill level like pansy-boy Legolas jumping on to a moving horse whilst felling orcs with a volley of arrows and washing his hair) is that their capital is called Sofia, which means wisdom. I keep seeing that name popping up all over the place (I had never noticed that philosophy literally means "Love of wisdom/knowledge"), and I wonder what prompted the ruler (still a Khan at that time?) of Bulgaria to name his main city in such a way.

Update 24/01/06 We finally won at the pub trivia. 25 out of a total of 29 (Tennesse Williams did NOT write "Death of a Salesman")! Prize pool of €40, which we blew on drinks immediately.

Only 15 minutes to go! I'll fill this post up with reactionary fawning over the new gear once it is announced. Let's hope these news servers can keep up with the load.

• So far, nothing particularly good. iPod accessory, iPhoto update, iMovie update. Tiger point release. Where's the hardware?!
• Oh wow. An iMac with an intel processor. And a Power - er Mac - Book with an intel processor. Only in 15". I don't think underwhelmed really is a strong enough word to describe this.

Thanks Yun! Looks like I'll be World-Cupping it up big time.

I'm back from my little adventure in the United Kingdom largely intact. It was only a 8 hour journey door to door from Palmers Green to Heidelberg. I'm not sure how it managed to take so long given that it was only a 15 min drive, 30 min train ride, 1 hour flight, 2 and a half hour bus ride, and a 30 min final bus ride to get here. Add on 1 hour waiting at Stansted, another hour at Hahn, and I'm still missing an hour of time somewhere. Luckily, it didn't really feel like an eight hour odyssey, and I spent most of my time in a comatose state during the journeys. I plan to read, listen to music off the shuffle, and generally make the most of my time trapped in a tin can hurtling along at unnatural speeds, but I usually just end up going into some form of mental hibernation, staring at the back of the seat in front of me. When I get to my destination (or close to it) I just snap out of the coma, and act relatively normal. In fact that's what my superpower would be - the ability to get off planes, trains and automobiles at the right spot (that's assuming that I am on the right train to start with - if I can't get that basic stuff right, then I've got no chance). It's not that bad a superpower, and is better than invisibility at the very least.

I put this to the test when I had my first nights out on the town in London. Having lived in London beforehand, I assumed that I would have a certain familiarity with the surroundings, and would just be able to walk around at night purely on instinct. I managed to get lost every single time I went out in London. The first time I managed to get lost was with my cousins - to be honest, they can pretty much take all the blame for that - where they were meant to get me to Temple station so I could meet up with Will (What do you call the brother of your sister-in-law?) and Liz (Girlfriend of brother of sister-in-law). We ended up in a nice, but strangely busy pub (for a Thursday night) in Covent Gardens (or somewhere close to there, I was lost). Getting home was also ridiculously easy as I managed to get one of the last tubes home, wander around outside the tube station looking for my bus stop, and jumping on a quick bus back.

I popped up to Leeds just before Christmas (4 hour coach ride - hooray!), and caught up with Andre, who is living up there for a little while, in between travelling around lots of places. It was nice to traipse around the Yorkshire countryside, and by the end of the two days up there I was feeling really quite rural. I even had a taste of one of the local ales at room temperature and ate a Yorkshire pudding. Check out the linked pictures for pictures of the Yorkshire countryside, Andre and Sarah.

Emboldened by my success in getting home safely on my own earlier, I went a little further afield (Embankment!) to catch up with Vienna after Christmas, and tried to figure out how to get home from there. I actually managed to get lost in SOHO on the way home from Embankment, where my little one-pub trip turned into a slightly longer journey, when I stopped into the Blues Bar. It's quite a nice place - and has a very student-like feel to it. It's a bit like one or two pubs/bars here in Heidelberg actually. It was this night that I finally experienced the magic N29 bus. In Sydney I had my magic bus which would take me home late at night (the 288 every hour up till about 3am), and I had found my magic bus here too. It left Trafalgar Square every 10 minutes or so, and would drop me off just outside my cousin's house. This would have been perfect if I was a little more familiar with the landmarks leading up to my uncle's house. Looking out of the window on the bus I could have been anywhere in London, and sitting there, passing all these shops, I was having serious doubts about my ability to pick the stop to get off at. Even worse, if I fell asleep, I could miss the entire suburb, and not even know I missed it. Since I was also sneaking onto the bus without paying for the ticket (I had a day travelpass, and I wasn't going to pay for another ticket), I thought I should keep a low profile and not ask for help. It all turned out well when my bus-stop senses went all tingly at the right time (with a bit of alcohol dampening) and I got off just after the perfect bus stop. I resisted the temptation to put some underwear on top of my trousers, and strolled home.

London public transport was thrown into complete chaos due to the strikes which they all decided to have on New Years eve. It almost convinced me not to go out, but I took the plunge and braved the tube system. Even running at lower capacity, it was still remarkably easy to get down to Islington. A number of stations were closed (any of the Tube stations around Palmers green), and there were no people selling tickets, but the tubes still managed to run regularly. I met up with Andre and Sarah, and had a great time over the evening (I took the camera, but didn't take any pics) at this pub with a live band in the basement which was a bit loud at times (are there any good sound engineers left?). We decided to head back relatively early after it turned 2006, and started to make our ways home. I finally got to try out the free public transport which they had been so kind to give away over the New Years evening. At first, I thought it was a bit of a scam - offer free tube travel, but have all the tube stations closed (which they were at that time of night) - but I gave them the benefit of the doubt when I found out the buses were free. I quickly changed my mind again when I saw the crowds of people waiting for a bus; there is no way they could have charged people to get on the buses, and still manage to clear everyone out of there in a few hours. I think that the transport authority had no other choice but to make the buses free. Even with these attempts to improve the flow of people, it still took me about 3 hours to get home through the ludicrous traffic of inner city London (which was probably worse than the traffic in Rome at 1 am).

As Bri will be happy to know, I saw some squirrels in London. I don't think they are the same as these evil ones, but I took all necessary precautions.