eska, it sounds like you're letting your sup walk all over you - not a good idea!

check out www.kamernet.nl

housing everywhere in holland is very expensive because the government doesn't provide enough student housing. almost all of the phd students i know (i live in holland) live in a shared flat (300-500 euros/month).

on the other hand, there's still a sizeable chunk of money left after you've paid the rent, even when you've paid for medical insurance (80-150 euros/month). i don't think you should worry too much, unless you're used to having your own flat. you wouldn't be owning a car anyway (shitty parking and EVERYONE uses a bike, yes, even your supervisor). you can shop at ALDI's, that's cheap (i spend max 30 euros/week on food shopping).

every phd student i know has the same income and they can survive on it. you can always teach private english lessons too for extra cash.

Hey Swantje,
I'm really curious as to why this topic is of interest to you. Why are you so keen to insist that Cantonese is a language? In my case, I need to sort out the translation issues. What's your point?

i'm not particularly interested in the topic really. my interests in linguistcs lay elsewhere. copying and pasting from wikipedia was a matter of seconds.

but i'm a linguist and i think people who are writing any kind of thesis touching on fundamental issues in linguistics should know what they are writing about. also, i have read too many articles and theses written by chinese linguists and i though that maybe i could change the world one step at a time...

i looked into a (linguistics) phd at LMU and there were no tuition fees. also, a lot of the programs were in english. you would just have to make sure your supervisors are comfortable with english and then you'd be fine, there are bound to be tons of non-germans at LMU because its very international.

at my home university in germany you can get a library membership for free as a non-student, it's just not advertised that much as the uni doesn't want the library to become flooded with non-academics (very likely...).

LMU has a very good reputation, munich is a great city and life/studying in germany is a lot cheaper in the uk. you could check out the LMU kindergarten too, get your kids put on the waiting list. getting a PhD in germany is a very good idea, it would boost your salary later on...

yes, if you have a BFPO address then it counts the same as a UK address. i should know

i think BHC has a point, just tell them that you've quit your PhD. see if they behave differently after that...
if they ask you to work overtime again then you've "got a date with your boyfriend, sorry, can't cancel now, he'd be SO disappointed".

i had the same problem with my supervisor. i had a talk with him once and told him that his way of criticising me was making me depressed and wasn't helping me with my work at all. he admitted that he had poor people skills and said that he wasn't good at constructive criticism. at the time he was my only supervisor.
about a month later he announced that i would have a second supervisor and now our meetings are always together (the three of us). my second supervisor is very good with constructive criticism and has good people skills and my first supervisor is less harsh and soul-destroying when she is around now that we've talked about the problem i sometimes tell him to watch out when he's overdoing it (we share an office together).

so this is why i have two supervisors...

well, my goal is 65 kg (i'm tall - 1.77m), so by the end i will have lost a third of my body weight

easypeasy - no more than 1000 calories a day and you'll be dropping the weight, i promise you that...

"Like other major varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is often considered a dialect of a single Chinese language for cultural or nationalistic reasons, though in practice Cantonese, like many other Chinese language varieties, is mutually unintelligible with many other Chinese "dialects"."
(from Wikipedia, article on Cantonese (linguistics)).

i would contact the other uni and tell them you've got an offer (but don't say from whom!) and you have to decide within a few days, could they already tell you if you've got the place?

wait for an answer from them and then decide. don't tell the uni that's already made an offer. i wouldn't accept and then cancel later on, those guys won't be pleased about that and you'll meet them again somewhere along the line.

bread and butter pudding, spotted dick... the list is endless.
i am an ex-forces child, so i ate english food while i still lived with my parents. since then - nada!

i've just lost 20 kilos (10 more to go...) so that weight would be back on in a split second if i'm not careful! maybe time to start working out...?!

hairui, i advise you check up the wikipedia articles i talked about earlier.

when i'm reading experimental articles i have a "standardised summary sheet" (2 pages) i fill in and then file away:

author, year, title (so i can find it in my endnote library)
main questions/aim of study
method (subjects, controls, tasks, materials)
results
summary

later on i can just flick through my files and then i have the necessary details without having to read through the article again.

unfortunately this system does not work for theoretical articles