Missing a social life

For the past few weeks, I've been working pretty much non-stop on my dissertation proposal so I can get a draft to my advisor on Monday. I have a feeling that I'll have to keep going at this pace until May, which is when the dissertation proposal defense is scheduled. Honestly, I'd rather spend my time flitting around in a dress like this:

Pretty model and dress courtesy of Christian Dior

A little shallow? Definitely. But working seven days a week for a while has made me crave a completely different lifestyle.

It's spring!

Or London's equivalent, which means occasional sunshine while the days barely warm up. It feels a little strange to wear sunglasses for the first time since October!

Window Display at Coco de Mer, Covent Garden

The bunny seems a little out of place.

Braithwaite Street, E1

Wanted: dreamless sleep

The past few weeks have been very busy with work. I'm now juggling two project coordinator positions - one for the research project I've been working on for the past year, and the other for the Indian project that just got funded. My advisor is leaving the country on Monday for a month, and has been pushing me to write a bunch of documents that usually take at least a month to finalize. Working with colleagues in Peru, Thailand and India also means getting up at random hours for phone calls. For example, I got up at 5:30am today for a meeting with some researchers in India. I haven't been this exhausted in a while.

On a funnier note, I realized that being tired all the time translates into having a hard time distinguishing between real life and my dreams! I had a dream last night that I had a video skype conference with my Indian colleagues (whom I've never seen) - they were all strangely obese and talking about how I had to put documents on a flash drive as a backup measure. In the real phone call this morning, I started talking about how they shouldn't worry about the safety of any documents since they are all on a flash drive. There was a long, uncomfortable pause while I fished around my bag to find the imaginary flash drive to show my advisor. She changed the topic pretty quickly and the rest of the call went well, but I'm pretty sure everyone thinks I'm a ditz or just plain crazy.

Eeek!

Hackney Borough (fancy Brit speak for neighborhood) was recently promoting recycling at the Brick Lane market. They built this robot entirely out of recycled items, and were marching it up and down Brick Lane. It was a cool, though slightly odd idea, which failed in one major way: they couldn't really control the speed of the robot, so it was ploughing through the streets at a very fast pace. People (including me) were literally scrambling to get out of its way! It also made a very strange, loud scratchy noise when it moved. I kind of felt like I was in a weird sci-fi film.

London markets

I love the number of cool markets London has on any given day of the week. On Saturdays, I often go to Broadway Market, which is at the bottom of London Fields and not far from my place. It's full of proper East End types, trendy hipsters, and young couples with babies. Oh, and things like this on cold, rainy and gray days:


View from L'Eau à la Bouche, my favorite cafe, on a sunnier Saturday:



Come and visit so I can take you here!