Cheng had her share of internet problems...

Sorry for the lack of emails of late. My housemate fiddled with our broadband router and something has been not quite right since then, affecting our Net connection for more than a week. It is now running again but I am not taking anything for granted (which includes watching several Sex & the City episodes to compensate for my week's deprivation of streaming shows *lol*).

The weather has been lovely, which in the Dutch context means less rain than usual. My only problem is the cold. It has been hovering around 5 degrees, so I have lugged out my bulky winter clothings already. I've even bought nice red gloves from H&M on reduced price to cope with cold-numbing fingers while cycling. This winter is going to be *ccccccold*, I reckon.

My time in Poland last week was really predictably, *nice*. =.)
Dominik showed me parts of Poznan - we visited the old market (Stary Rynek), the zoo (I wanted the autumn trees while Dominik wanted to see the insect exhibition), his university, and a nicely renovated old brewery that is now a upmarket shopping mall. We even managed to meet up with his friends from university for beer, and lapped up a meal at the local "bar mleczny" (or "milk bars"), a legacy of Polish communist days.

Coming back was tough, more so because of two sleep-deficient nights on the night train (I left on Monday night and came back on Thursday night). Anyway, I had a full week of econometrics waiting for me, which kept me busy. Without internet at home, I spent most of last week in school, survived mainly on cold meals and cup soups, and came home around midnight. It paid off because my presentation (part of the assessment for my econometric course) went well last Friday.

It has been nearly two months since I've started my programme and the verdict is, "so far so good", if not "better than expected". Our pictures are finally up in the school's official website(http://www.governance.unimaas.nl/home/staff/research_fellows.html) while meantime, us (first-years) joked to one another that they are procrastinating on putting them up until January when we will have our mock research proposal defence so that they know which one of us they will actually "keep" (two fellows were kicked out last April at the real research proposal defence). I've attached the new school brochure where there is a nice big picture of me in "serious discussion" with Kwan, my Thai classmate who used to work with the World Bank. You can tell that the school dedicates a fair amount of money and work on public relations and marketing. *lol*

I received an email from my Belgian IMPALLA coursemate, suggesting dinner and an overnight stay at her house in Belgium this coming Wednesday. Also invited are her boyfriend, Emiliano (my Italian ex-coursemate) and Mariya (my Bulgarian ex-coursemate who is doing her internship in Brussels and was visiting me two weeks ago). All four of us did one groupwork together and got along really well in Luxembourg. It should be a nice reunion. =.)

This weekend is unexciting as I am working on my research topic for Monday's research tutorial. *lol* Two weeks ago, I was interested to do something on higher education. This week, I am exploring the literature on housing and segregation (mainly on immigrants). I should settle on one (broad) research topic soon - research fellows are required to show the ability to *focus*!

Ooops, I just realised that it is 5am! Time to wrap up and catch some sleep.

cheng