Laziness has gotten the better of me lately. I have only 6 hours of lectures per week, and only have to go into uni two days per week. The rest of the time is supposed to be occupied by my project. However, I met my supervisor Kinwah on the first week of term, at which point he told me that he will be in China for a month, and promptly assigned me about half a graduate textbook to learn up and some other tasks.

So I'm without my project supervisor until early November, and 'merely' have to read up on about 60 pages of radiative transfer physics. This means that I have to force myself to sit down and actually study, which isn't something I can get up to this early in term. It's something to study a topic when it's in set out and nicely defined in a syllabus, and another thing when it's basically open-ended.

I haven't spent as much time as I should be doing the things I'm supposed to. I was aiming to work for at least 6 days a week, but in reality I'm managing something like 4 or 5. It doesn't help that my current top priority is applying for my PhD places, which involves filling in applications, writing personal statements and preparing for the American GRE tests. I reckon that when my supervisor gets back, I might get a bollocking from him over how little I've achieved, but once I get my applications sent off I'll be able to focus more on the project.

Last night I watched Downfall, the German movie released earlier this year portraying the last days of Hitler as the Nazi regime verges on collapsed. It was really great film...it pulls no punches in showing the violence and horror of those last days, but I found it completely absorbing in a macabre way. The acting was superb...at no point did I doubt that the actor Bruno Ganz was Hitler himself. After the film ended, I was deeply disturbed and everyone else who was watching it was, too. I wholeheartly recommend Downfall, but it's not for the faint-hearted.

An update to the other blog, with the final part of the story of my observing run in Oz.