* finish my PhD
* find a decent job
* improve my french
* upgrade my computer
* buy a road bike and compete in a race
* visit Paris
2004 was not really what i would call a good year both on a personal and professional level. i lost friends, a person very close to me died and i spend most of the year working on my thesis which should have been finished some time ago. so i wish and hope that 2005 is going to be better.
considering that tomorrow is New Year’s Eve it is about time to come up with some plans and resolutions for 2005. what comes in very handy right now is (yet another) social network with a quite different and original approach: at 43 things you can make a list what you want to do next year or in your life and find people with the same goals. additionally, you can find people who have already realized their plans. it’s still sort of beta and you either need to sign up in a queue or get an invitation from somebody who has already an account. anyway, i find it quite intriguing… let’s see what items are going to make it onto my “to do” list for 2005…
here is the best and worst of 2004 from my point of view.
i use the last days of 2004 to revise as much as i can of the third and last chapter of my thesis. well, i can easily think of better ways to spend my time but unfortunately this job simply has to be done. as a result i haven’t been able to come up with some new year’s resolutions yet. and a review of 2004 is still pending as well.
one thing i can already say for sure: c’était l’année de la souffrance. pourquoi? this is fairly easily explained. a friend of mine once said to me: writing a PhD thesis is like a marriage from hell. effectivement, il a tout à fait raison.
the festivities are over which means back to work. the third chapter of the thesis (i.e. the one about Neocron) still needs to be revised. althought this chapter has only 58 pages i do not expect it to be a quick and easy task.
les autres faits marquants:
i wish you all a merry christmas and a happy new year!
Je vous souhaite un joyeux Noël et une très bonne année 2005 !
this is meryl, my cat. she keeps me great company when i am writing/revising my thesis. she is a princess and she knows it.
yeah i know, it’s already tuesday and now i come along with a weekend recap. excuse-moi for being rather busy. first off, there’s still the thesis revising which is not really joyful but needs to be done. second, believe it or not, vh-1 decided to air a “VH-1 rocks Black Sunday” special where they played all those great rock’n'roll videos from the 80s and 90s! and last but not least i dug into the huge pile of unanswered e-mail this weekend, some of them required me to answer in french and this is still quite a chore for me. i feel incredibly clumsy when writing in french.
and by the way: check out “brainiac” if you have the chance! the second season is hilarious! with features like “tina turner and her bunsen burner” and “you can’t stop rock’n'roll but we beg to differ”!
i decided to get myself a digital camera as xmas present. amazon.de had some pretty tempting offers and in the end i chose a canon digital ixus 500 (in north america known as PowerShot S500). i am quite happy about my choice. i wanted a small camera that fits easily in the back pocket of a cycling jersey so that i can take it with me on bike rides. today was the first sunny day in weeks and i took a picture of the winter sun setting.
i had a hard time falling asleep this previous night because i had a splitting headache. really one of the bad kinds, when you think someone is drilling a hole in to the back of your skull and your head is about to burst into pieces. i finally decided to swallow a painkiller at 1:30am and one hour later the pain was gone and i fell asleep…