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!

Urinal in a pub, Victoria Park

This city is full of surprises. The old-fashioned pub had dim lighting, stuffed animals, a cozy fireplace... and this.

News

Just found out that I got the grant to fund the child health project in India! Looks like I'll be based in New Delhi from July 2011 - September 2012.

Happy (belated) Valentine's Day!

Cheesy as it is, I couldn't resist taking this picture the last time I was in Paris:

As you probably know, I'm not into celebrating Valentine's Day. Had a huge exam yesterday, so I treated myself to True Grit in the evening. I thought the theater would be fairly empty since couples/groups/etc. would watch something more romantic, but I was so wrong!

The Sartorialist

Do you follow The Sartorialist, Scott Schuman's blog? He's a former men's fashion director who started carrying a camera around and documenting street style in New York, and now all over the world. Of course he has an equally stylish and cool French fashion photographer girlfriend, Garance Doré.

Watch this video if you have a few minutes to spare. It follows Scott around in his so-called "visual life" while he gets his hair cut (by an outrageously hip barber, naturally), hangs around in coffee shops and takes photographs of stylish men and women, including builders!