(no subject)
Christ, I can't wait to have this bloody thesis finished. I've had another wave of anxiety-dreams and waking up in cold sweats at 4 in the morning, you see. PhDs are all fun and games until the end, and then people suddenly start expecting things of you. The word count is stubbornly refusing to budge from 5k, as I've been bogged down doing yet more data analysis. All this leads up to the point of the post, I guess:
My boss keeps offering me money to stay for 7 months extra* after the end of the thesis, my PhD funding has run out so I have no income from now until Christmas anyway. This is to allow me to write up papers properly and get them into good journals which would be very good for my career (not to mention taking some pressure off, as I will finally know where my next paycheque is coming from). The trouble is that I'm not sure I want to stay in Edinburgh until the end of next July, which is when it would run until; loads of people I know have left Edinburgh now, and I'm worried that I'm starting to stagnate a bit. Straw poll - should I take the money (bearing in mind that at the moment I have nothing else lined up) or get out while I can?
*Actually, I don't need 7 months to do these things, the only reason that I'd be here until the end of July is for RAE purposes, and in fact I could even take the last two months or so as a paid holiday, which is rather nice.
I finally finished the recent spate of travelling last Saturday (back in time for folks' birthday celebrations) and I noticed today that r1chard hasn't put up anything about our exciting boy-weekend in Budapest so I thought I'd beat him to it. Budapest was fantastic. Among other highlights was a visit to the old secret service headquarters, which has been done up as a museum talking about the role of the building throughout WW1&2 and then the following communist regime. It's not often I'm moved to sing the praises of a museum, but this place was far and away the best example I've ever seen. Lighting levels and music were very carefully managed to create a darkly surreal atmosphere; the tone is set by the huge dusty Russian tank standing on a black marble and iron water feature in the shady central courtyard, in front of a giant steel wall printed with photographs of people who 'disappeared'. Hungary was a pretty rough place for most of the twentieth century, as you're frequently reminded, suffering first at the hands of the Hungarian Arrow-Cross Nazis, then the Reds. The trail through the exhibition talks about the persecution of many groups - mainly religious people (of all stripes), intellectuals and landowners - with shocking stories about Stalinist deportations to the Gulag. The visit is rounded off by a trip down to the interrogation and detention cells and ends in a largeish room with metal walls, filled with 6 foot high wire crosses with candle-lights on them, and the names of the victims punched into the metal walls and lit from behind.
As a city, Budapest is beautiful - a lot of the architecture has survived various wars and occupations (bullet holes in the walls can be seen out-of-focus in the photo below), including the 19th century turkish baths, which had to be done. Ah, nothing quite like spending a morning in a heated pool with fat old Hungarian men in loincloths. Mmmm.... Food is 'hearty', it's just as well that I like ghoulash. Beer is good, cheap and plentiful, and the scarily young-looking hookers that propositioned us made for a nice talking point. The photos here link to more pictures if anyone's at a loose end.
Next week I've got to go on some horrible career-building course (at least it's paid for), then down to Bristol the weekend after. I would say 'to get away from freshers' week' but it's actually been ok this year - I've got over the hump of finding it deeply unpleasant, and there were some nice folks at the night last night who will be along for cr4k's leaving do on Saturday. Anyway, I suppose all this hedonism had to end sooner or later... back to work for me!
