Category: Fenton
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Next Please!
For those that have been keeping score you’ll be aware that the end of this July will see the completion of my current employment contract. Further work with my current employer is not possible, mostly due to policy, bureaucratic and administrative reasons (You didn’t think keeping a Dutch-employed Australian in Germany was easy did you?).…
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Contact!
Well strictly contacts. My most commonly worn pair of glasses recently defied any further attempts to keep them in one piece. Thus, requiring a new pair, I decided that instead I would see how I went with contact lenses. I have a trial period of a month with some soft, disposable lenses and I must…
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Licence Obtained
While not quite the dynamic title of a James Bond book, I’m nevertheless pleased to have completed the final hurdle — the practical exam. You may recall the earlier ones — to receiving my German driver’s licence. It was actually the second attempt having failed the first one on the last turn into the testing…
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View from Europe
I still follow quite closely the news and current events in Australia, using the ABC website almost exclusively for this. Two recent stories in a row made me think a little about what Europe currently means to an expatriated Aussie. The bombing at Madrid Airport made me sit up and take notice since Gaynor and…
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Blogger Hiccup
Google have released an updated version of Blogger — the site and software which power this blog. During the change over many articles were ‘re-published’, so to speak, when we applied the new labelling system [1]. So if you subscribe to the blog via the Atom or FeedBlitz newsfeeds (see down the left-hand side of…
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Paranimf-in’
A little while ago two PhD students at work graduated from their respective Dutch universities. I had had a small hand in helping both of them with their theses — mostly editing (thanks be to Brett), English and some thoughts on layout. I attended the graduation ceremonies of both and they are somewhat different to…
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German Driver’s Licence
This post is part vent, part information. So, the time has come for me to obtain my German driver’s licence[1] and there are a number of rules governing the use of foreign licences here. For starters the most infuriating part is the sheer bureaucratic and almost arbitrary nature of which licences are easily exchangeable. Once…
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Poster Accolade
Followers of the newly published calendar (link to the left) may have noticed a recent two-day event, the 18th NNV/CPS Symposium. It’s a small conference run by the Dutch Physical Society (NVV) primarily as a forum for PhD students. I presented a poster (pdf file, 1.8MB) entitled Detection of Relativistic Electrons and Positrons in a…
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Consider Columbus
For those not in the field of scientific endeavour (or indeed other forays into investigating the unknown) here is a quick working definition of what it is all about. Research, n.: Consider Columbus: He didn’t know where he was going. When he got there he didn’t know where he was. When he got back he…
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Going Dutch
Even though we are living in Germany[1], I am employed by a Dutch organisation, FOM. For foreigners coming into the Netherlands, they invite you to a Dutch language and customs course. This is to help you assimilate and acclimatise and so even though I spend very little time in the Netherlands I was obliged to…