Friday, August 14, 2009

Another weekly update from Liza, in standard form:

Last week was indeed the last week of running subjects. By Friday, I had 19 and pretty stable results. My Matlab-savvy supervisor has gone, and this Tuesday my original fmri-specialist supervisor came back. Today was the last day that I battle matlab in any way alone—I’ve done all I can to crack the logic of scripts to make them do what I want for me, but I failed, and I don’t feel even a little bad about it. Now my task is to write, put together a powerpoint, a poster, and watch what others are doing. Just a little more quick analysis left for me. Actually next week in Neuchatel there is a conference where everyone from the lab will go to hear one of the lab members give a talk (and attend the conference in general). If I can get funds for it, I will also go—a highly productive way to spend my dwindling time, now that I am not tied to subjects but to word documents that can be edited on trains, at home, by the lake (today I worked by the Post Office at EPFL for a while---there is a circle of stones, a sculpture of sorts there that served as my seat).

Thus is my work. As for fun, this past weekend I went to Zurich and Salzburg. At Zurich of course was the street parade, but this was really not my goal in going there, so with a few other people I hopped some churches and enjoyed their Kuntsmuseum. At night we met up with the larger group of summer students who had in fact come there to party, and party we did until it was time to catch the overnight train to Salzburg. Salzburg was excellent in some ways, except in the unpleasantness of its train station and nothing opening until 9 AM (we arrived at 4, when it was still dark and Saturday night for some people). Another day of many churches, their fairytale castle, a satisfying pretzel, unusual number of traditional outfits, ending with a concert in the Franciscan church. The way the trains worked out, I only got back to Lausanne at 9:15 AM. It was a journey of little sleep. I enjoyed it.

No comments: