Summary: 2007

By popular demand (1 and still counting) I have decided to write a summary of what happened in 2007 to make up for my lack of posts.

I will begin the high points of 2007 because after writing the low points I might not be in the mood to continue with this post. The first and most memorable event of the year was meeting with one of my best internet friends in London around the 2/3rds mark of the first quarter. It was only one day, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself that day, perhaps moreso than any other day of the year. We spent the day touring the city and its museums, and at times finding a way out of the state of being 'lost' :D.

For the next few months I soldiered along with my studies and achieved as much as my body and mind could afford. Through my diligence I was awarded with a prize and summer stipend to do research with one of my professors, which lasted approximately 2 months. For the majority of that time I was reading up on the required background information and trying to digest it, but for the last few weeks I had more freedom and my professor gave me various results to prove. We managed to prove some small result independently and we decided to write a preprint, but we haven't actually got around to writing it up yet. This is what my summer consisted of and I didn't really take much of a break before the next semester begun.

Once the next semester had started I immediatley got on with my dissertation but after about a month of failing to understand a paper as my background did not permit me to understand most of the concepts. So after about 6 weeks, we (my superivor and I) decided to slightly change the direction of my project and I begun to learn Algebraic Topology. As I had no background knowledge in topology whatsoever it was a difficult and slow start, in fact by the time the semester had ended (mid-December) I had only written around 15 pages. But throughout the Christmas `break' I decided not to take any break (except for the three days I was sick) and worked entirely on my dissertation. I managed to write on average 2.5 pages per day, which transformed my project from a brief introduction to an almost complete 67-page project. I am still waiting for my supervisor to read it though and any decision on what to do next will be made through his feedback.

I guess those are all the high points of 2007 and now we come to 2008. I haven't made any new years resolutions, as I make resolutions after each day and never seem to be able to stick to them. The low points of 2007 I would rather much avoid. But lets briefly summarise them to: I made some friends I wish I didn't and now being hunted down for my blasphemous ways :P.

I cannot promise (and is very unlikely) that I will continue to post here throughout 2008. I suppose the best you can hope for is two posts per year (and this is one of them). To all my reader(s) out there, have a good a year.