21 September 2010

Trains, buses, research methods

I'm on the train from Coventry to Milton Keynes, but thanks to the magic of my mother's iPod I am once again able to blog on the run. I was in Coventry to go the University of Warwick for a talk on intercultural communication. The talk was okay as far as talks go: a PhD student presenting some very rough data that, in my opinion, was pretty seriously flawed. But what do I know, I'm just another student. No, the U of Warwick is very nice and I am happy to be invited to what was, essentially, a department event. In a perfect world, these sorts of things lead to good contacts which lead to collaboration and, eventually, good work. We'll see though. Tomorrow I am going to London to King's College for a similar event, but with much bigger names and which will also include a dinner. That should be a good experience although I am reading the article we're going to talk about and it's pretty meh. Hopefully the talk will be more interesting. At the very least, I am also going up to Middlesex to get some work done for the new term.

The trains and buses have worked well today. I was able to read and not spend any extra money in the shops as I was passing through. I don't know why I ever go into them, really. I know what they have: high calorie, fatty, expensive food that I shouldn't be eating anyway. We went grocery shopping today and I got like three different kinds of beans that I am going to try out-- cooking them with rice and vegetables in the rice cooker. Should be delicious and full of good protein and not fat. A good lunch for me at school. Yesterday, I had almost no sugar. Today had been pretty low too, although I did have a small cookie with lunch. Otherwise, I've been really good. Keeping under the caloric intake and hopefully getting to a point in about two and a half weeks that I cn come back up to an even input/output ratio. First week in October.