Not been following it this year. The Apprentice is my fave though! I applied last year and didn't get an interview... I guess Sir Alan felt intimidated 8-)

She's Swedish. I heard she took an ikea chair to work, stood on it and sung the Swedish national anthem, then threw meatballs at her colleagues.

Anybody ever procrastinate in Yahoo Chat? Professors' chat:1 is wicked.

Also on the night train, viva in one week.

This thread is sad.

Crapola! 5k??! Is your supervisor going to lynch you? I once spent ~£750 on a radioactive isotope which seemed outrageously expensive (thankfully the expt. worked). £5k is nuts :\

sneaks/phdbug, this isn't helping. I think you need to sing the national anthem...

Try the pomodoro technique. http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

Also try LifeHack for more ideas. http://www.lifehack.org/

And Sneaks clearly has aspirations in Broadway!

Oh! How I have missed your kind and eloquent prose :-x

Young man, there's a place you can go.
I said, young man, when you're short on your dough.
You can stay there, and I'm sure you will find
Many ways to have a good time.

It's fun to stay at the y-m-c-a.
It's fun to stay at the y-m-c-a.

They have everything for you men to enjoy,
You can hang out with all the boys ...

It's fun to stay at the y-m-c-a.
It's fun to stay at the y-m-c-a.

Yeah good one bugsy, someone is having a hard time and you rub it in their face how bloody happy you are!

I'm also preferring my anonymity! Co-creation sounds interesting... does that encompass open-source software etc.? Or is this some business thing I know nothing about 8-)

That avatar reminds me of YMCA. Anyway why are you telling us about a boil on your butt under a thread "Lack of Daily Progress" -- and you call me a troll?

I know a black guy on yahoo chat who swears that Americans hate black people, and blames this perceived nation-wide racism for all his problems. Even when Obama was elected he maintained these views. Personally I think blaming a country for one's woes is a sign of personal problems. Doing a PhD generally does bring problems, but the country is incidental.

I'd suggest it's a small minority who will make an issue of your non-Britishness; this generally relates to unfamiliarity rather than racism.

As for 'cold and difficult to interact with', it's all relevant really. British people are famously reserved. Some people interpret it as snobbiness, others as coldness, etc. I recently had a friend who spent a few months in the UK as a visiting scholar. She received two PhD offers to study at Oxford, and another at Imperial, and she rejected them and went to the USA where people are less reserved (more like the country she grew up in). The campus there in the USA has British students, and her peers think they're very stuck up and snobby. She had to explain to them that they're very reserved, that's why they come across like this.

The 'coldness' is something that disappears with familiarity, so if you attend socials and go the pub with your colleagues it won't be long before it improves.