Last week, I went to a talk by the Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the UK. It was entertaining and interesting.
In particular, I discovered a new fact about myself. I must be colourblind. There was a lot of talk about how the Chávez government was a government of the people, of the [...]

No, I haven’t given up writing this blog. I’m just really busy right now, writing papers, doing funding applications, and all other sorts of stuff. I’ll be back in due course. Anyway, here are some things that I would comment on if I had more time and energy:

The recent NATO summit and its implications (especially [...]

Or: Do hairdressers ever do what you tell them?
Today I had to overcome one of my social fears: that of hairdressers. It had been since last September that I had let anyone near my hair, so it really was about time. I have discovered that Spanish hairdressers are generally quite good - or let’s say, [...]

Now that exams are over (phew!) and I’m technically on holiday, yesterday was shop-time! Went to Dundee (the “city” closest to our little bubble) and acquired this:

Image from joinred.com
It’s a t-shirt from Gap’s (Product)RED range, which means that half the profits from the sales of any (Product)RED item will go to the Global Fund to [...]

This is what my wall looks like these days:

Let me explain…

National Geographic Map “The World - Political”. Indispensable for the International Relations geek with slight weaknesses in Geography. I wish I was as cool as Tom Hanks as Senator Charlie Wilson in Charlie Wilson’s War and could list all the “-stans” in the right geographical [...]

This is what I found when I got home from my Christmas holidays the other night:

It was two o’clock in the morning, I was dead tired, and as I opened my kitchen cupboard I found these two ladies staring at me. Granted, their makers misspelt the name but I’m still flattered… I’m the new Barbie! 

Thanks [...]

… and all that jazz. Thanks to all those who plough through all my nonsense on a more or less regular basis. 

P.S.: Hugo wishes you a Happy New Year, too. He’ll be back.

An excursion into the lands of internal hard drive failure…
On Thursday, I was innocently sitting in front of my 17 month-old, cherished MacBook when suddenly it said “click”, the rainbow wheel started spinning and it became unresponsive. I turned it off, tried to reboot, and all I got was the dreaded grey screen with a [...]

In my quest to become a member of the elite community that is academia, I’m running into a few difficulties. Hitherto, I was convinced that research was something that was meant to be practically applicable or at least useful in some sense, and I thought this applied not only to scientific investigation, but also to [...]

OK, this is really lame. Today is blog action day and I’ve been too busy to get together a proper post. Sorry about that! Maybe I should’ve saved this post for today. Never mind.

So here goes with something that has been on my mind recently: ethical careers. As a student just about [...]