Straight from the doorways of Hell

Just got a bombmail last Friday. The grad student commitee told me my inscription for Quals are due next week. And I thought I still had about six months. My exam will have to take place within 60 days.

I programmed my entire research schedule so I could neatly present all three aspects of the first half of my project flawlessly completed and nicely published. By November, not two months from now!

On top of that, i'll probably have to cancel my July trip, as I'm now subject to the will of the commitee to set up a date for Quals. Nice way to toss a couple thousand reais right into the toilet.

Not to mention the fact that my advisor, who is supposed to go himself make my inscription, is somewhere between France and China, not to step onto this cursed soil for at least a whole month.

If I miss the date for booking Quals, I'll get another (last) chance for doing it over within six months. I just don't like the perspective of throwing away one of two only shots for getting a PhD ever.

Now I'm actually hating the people who programmed the dates for this kind of e-mail to be sent. Why would they send it to me on a Friday afternoon before a holiday? Few torture methods are more efficient. I know, it's just a sad coincidence. But still.

Anyway, I guess I'll not be showing up so frequently for about two months. I will have to sum up a lot of incomplete research, rush up a barely started approach for an entirely different problem, and try to make them all seem worthy of been carried on before the end of June.

At least I don't have a flu anymore.

20th Century Fox

Today is my great-grandmother's 100th birthday. One. Hundredth.

She's seen both World Wars, the entire Brazilian dictatorship, she has heard about the Titanic sink breaking news.

And now she is actually healthier (and saner) than my grandmother. Last year she taught me how to bake bread in a wood oven.

Makes you wonder.

Will I ever get to see 2083?

Off with his head!

Happy new year everybody.

Last night I realized that not only do I hate to lose a game (not The Game, which I've just lost), but the feeling comes much more bitter if it's against someone way better than me. I swear it's not gibberish.

I was playing Tranca, some sort of Canasta/Buraco crossover. It feels like Buraco with steroids. Anyway, it's a game of memorizing, just like buraco, only several times faster. And I got pwned.

I played with my girlfriend's cousins, who have played the damn game their entire lives in casinos and championships. It felt awful. The interesting thing about it is that I also played Buraco with some kids there, and lost too. But it didn't feel so violent.

(before you start thinking that I'm an awful player, let it be noticed that I did win most of the games I played. None of them was Tranca, though.)

I guess I'm just not ready to deal with my own incompetence. Maybe it's just pride, or my ego was scratched, but the bottom line is: if it gets to me so much, then I may be in need of some acceptance lessons, or i'll never get my thesis written.

Note: the Wikipedia pages linked above are terrible. Don't take the games as they are explained there. Maybe I'll make some adjustments to them later.