So that's what we have to look forward to, fabulous. But why does 'everything else' - presumably the rest of the universe - get sausages on a barbeque?

Hey, I am here, I haven't eloped with Wally, so can't tell you whre he is. I haven't been posting as much as usual because I've been caught up in the real world, so out of my laptop bubble. I started to feel a bit funny about the fact that I get so attached to you all, speaking every day, and feel I know you, but I don't really, like I talk to you more than I do with some of my friends. I started to think that was a bit weird I suppose it's the annonymity thing and the fact that people can just disappear whenever - which is a good thing about the forum too - but I started to feel weird about getting so attached to people who are so intrinsically distanced from me. Anyone esle feel the same way?

Thank you for listening Pete and the mod team, I'm sure I will really appreciate this one day, and it's good too lurk and get an insight into postdocdom. However, I'm wondering what the postdoc pic on the forum home page is - MA students get coffee beans, makes sense - I remember sprinting through the MA on caffiene; we PhD studes get baked beans, a true and accurate refletion of the extended povdom of our process; but what is that in the postdoc image, is it a lobster? Or perhaps a danish pastry? What did you chose to express the postdoc experience in the language of cornucopia? I can't make it out properly. A trivial query but I can't help wondering.

======= Date Modified 01 Feb 2010 20:59:41 =======
Hi Sneaks, what about lentil and tomatoe soup: put about half a mug of red lentils in a pan with a tin of tomatoes, some water, mixed herbs, a bay leaf and salt and pepper. Boil for at least 45 minutes and walla lentil and tom soup.

Or my favourite dead easy biscuits which are almost healthy:

3oz each of flour, porridge oats, sugar and butter. Also a table spoon of golden syrup and half a teaspoon of baking powder. Pre-heat oven to gas 6 and grease a baking tray. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl and melt the butter in a pan with the syrup, then mix the lot up together. Make round balls with the mix, then flatten them out onto the greased baking tray to make biscuit shapes to the size of your taste. Pop in the oven for 10 minutes then leave them to cool on a wire rack until you feel like eating them. Store in an air tight container, and carefully maintain denial that the oats counter-act all the sugar and butter.

======= Date Modified 31 Jan 2010 18:44:50 =======
======= Date Modified 31 Jan 2010 18:43:18 =======
My first supervisor who was rubbish did the following at my end of year presentation (part-time so not an upgrade):

Told me there would be a full range of AV equipment for me to use and that I should make a clip central to my presentation - I tell her it'll be video and she OKs this.


So I get to the room and there is no video equipment (I couldn't check the room earlier in the day because it was full of students and staff conducting end of year presentations), my presentation was, almost entirely, based around an analysis of my clip - all points fed in and out of that material. So I was thrown and had to ad lib the structure of the presentation and give an account of the clip, also ad lib and given that this was a scene which depicted masturbation and S&M sex it was not the easiest task! So, I got through it, the head of department said I'd done and excellent job and I went for an alfresco coffee with another of my sup's charges. My sup then appeared on the horizon and made her way towards us. She sat down and gave a detailed, scathing critique of my presentation criticisng me for being badly organised, for not having prepared a written paper (I had, I just couldn't use it), and for being so stupidly pressumptious as to think there would be a VCR in the room, and then compared me to the other student saying that if a carried on this way said other stude would finish in a much faster time than me. Oh and she suggested I work on my body language because I looked flustered.


This is what finally spurred me on to ditch the crap sup and I found a super one as a result, partly, of the timing, but also because I got fed up of the crap brigade and headed for the top. So not all bad really. Good thread. Oh, and she ran into the loo when I tried to discuss the episode with her in private...

Hi KB, I go through phases of having very vivid dreams and I do think they tell me something about myself and my life. I usually take notice of how I feel when I wake up and remember the dream - I think that must be the emotion I am using the dream to process - and aknowledge it while reflecting on the dream. Sometimes it takes all day to suss out what it means, and sometimes I just forget about it, but I think dreams are always useful, and that they are our way of processing events and emotions, of varying degrees of gravity, in our lives.

I had a really vivid drean about fish a few months ago, but it was about a giant fish in a tank with smaller ones who were all frightened of the bigger one and trying to snap at it, even though the big fish only wanted to help the litlle ones. I took that to mean that I'd been getting hassle from people who recognised me as a big fish intellectually and were frightened I would swallow them up - as big fish are prone to do with little 'uns. It helped me to gain a perspective on crtain events in my life and on my position in the world. I hope this helps and doesn't sound too poncey. I think you know what your dream means already, it's just a matter of finding that meaning in your own psyche; I don't have much faith in other people interpreting my dreams, they don't have all the nuances about how I felt about different events in it - only the dreamer has that. Good luck X

No, because I am a lion and I have all my lion mates with me. We may sleep tonight, but today I roar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcxVGfGgPak&feature=related

Sharks are right at the top of the food chain lady, just like I'm right at the top of the tree.

Right, that's it! Sharks are way scarier than tigers, even without music: http://www.britepic.com/gallery.php?id=454162&src=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm1.static.flickr.com%2F185%2F416248174_df4254ac4f.jpg&width=500&height=417&show_ads=1&caption=Galapagos+Shark+off+Oahu+North+Shore

I usually write the equivalent of a 4000 word essay for an hour long lecture. But then I don't follow the notes, and my talking is guided more by the slides - which I try to keep to a minimum, about 12 - 13 for an hour (lecture in visual studies, so they're not notes): I just need to write the essay to know what my structure and points are, and then I just start talking around the images. I also show clips, I find it breaks things up for me and the students - an hour of talking is intensive on both sides, and there is always faffing time to allow for - I'd say about 10 minutes altogether.

Whether to read directly from writing would, for me, depend on how accurate and careful I needed to be about what I was saying, so if this were a talk for students I would use my lecture method, but for a talk for people assessing my work or for a conferrence I would read directly from the page in order to be as accurate with my words as possible.

Good luck! I hope this helps a bit.

Hi Teek, I guess I avoid the worst of the rowdy kids becaus I go on a week day in the afternoon. I don't think anyone notuces or cares that I'm on my own - that'd be their problem anyway. I usually have a nice chat with the staff about the films that are showing, about which ones arre good etc, they're lovely.

======= Date Modified 29 Jan 2010 10:38:41 =======
Hi Satchi, no I haven't seen avatar, although I'd like to. Screenings of it never coincide with my cinema visits: I go on my chill out day and take the chance approach to my viewings, like people did before tv. I'm going to make a special effort to see tom ford's a single man and nine - I couldn't miss those.

Teek it's funny you should say you find vues uncomfortable, I hate going to see films in arty cinemas, at least ones that are local to me. They make me feel tense and as if i have to be clever about it all rather than just enjoy the experience; I also tend to bump into people i've worked with, or am working with, which is something I really don't want to do when relaxing. My current fave cinema is a medium sized vue in chav central!

======= Date Modified 28 Jan 2010 21:29:22 =======
Up in the Air's quite good, a familiar tale of commitment phobe turned faithful lover/partner, but this time there is a twist which it's probably best I don't tell you about. Not earth shattering or ground breaking, but some very well composed shots. It's one of those designed to be heart warming films of the kind James Stewart or Cary Grant used to be in, but, like Clooney, it just doesn't quite make that league. I think Clooney's career is set up to imitate that kind of movie star - especially Cary Grant - but he never shines that bright, he's pleasant enough to watch, but withut the uber pizzaz factor and spark of Grant.

Hey Florence, I'm here, although not for long as I'm sleepy. Your progress sounds fabulous; good luck tonight, you'll get there!

======= Date Modified 27 Jan 2010 11:02:22 =======
Hii Angel, it's really good to read that you are ready to snap at some ankles, get biting lady, and get what's yours! 8-)