I'm not sure if anybody reads this anymore...

but if they do, hi!

Having finally submitted my masters dissertation I have returned to the land of the living, at least for a month and a half before I start a PhD.

The masters dissertation was a real struggle, especially as I spent about 2 months on a statistics methodology that I was then told (2 weeks before my thesis was due, after months of no response to questions and pleas for help to the department and to various online forums) that I couldn't actually use that methodology, that it was invalid, etc. So, I got to try to rework my thesis in 2 weeks. Not a lot of fun. And I've already seen about half a dozen mistakes (one pretty bad) in what I submitted, but oh well.

In the midst of all this though I was offered a studentship in Kingston upon Thames to do a PhD. The project, which will be mapping the battlefield at Gallipoli as part of a larger international project studying the WWI engagement in time for the hundred year anniversary, looks like an amazing opportunity.... but I'm very heartbroken about having the leave Edinburgh.

Edinburgh is home. I think it's kind of like falling in love- you just know where you belong when you find it. I think I'll like living in Kingston well enough, but I want to come back here and will miss it terribly. I've walked around in the rain and wind and cold without an umbrella here and still thought to myself, 'God, I love this city'.... "It is a shining city, a city of sudden vistas, a city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again", says Alexander McCall Smith...

It's been kind of weird not having to work on my thesis anymore. I kind of don't know what to do with myself. My friend Eoghain (whom I met when I lived here in 2006 and has since become a science teacher in England) is here for the festival Fringe and has taken me to a bunch of shows (like 'Hamlet! the Musical'... I usually despise musicals, but the ones that know they're over the top and ridiculous can be pretty good). And on Sunday I went out to breakfast with a bunch of people, which then became a walk along the Union Canal, which then became rowing on the canal, which then became an impromptu barbecue in the Meadows.

and now it's 2:30 and I haven't done anything productive. I should at least go down to the bank and see what I need to do to get my money transferred. I will have a stipend at KU, but with how slowly they seem to move on everything, I don't think the money will be in my account in time to start paying my rent in England.