First rule

The first rule of a graduate researcher that wants to have a quite, relaxed, mediocre research life is this: NEVER EVER tell your supervisor that you finished what you had to do BEFORE your supervisor asks you about it. Because if you do tell him/her that you finished ... well ... your supervisor will not say "Good on you, take the rest of the week off!" but will definetly give you something new and exciting to do :).

1984.

winston smith. brain washing. terror and dictatorship. new language to prevent thought subtleties, also literature.this would be, in very few words, the impresion i got from reading that novel. But the most terrifying thought thatcame to me while reading it was the fact that the world pictured there is not utopic, but very very possible. And theeast european communist countries are living proof of it. Whether or not whatever happened there was a poor socialist experiment, historywill tell. But what remains sure is that the communist countries had everything: a new language to portray theparty's needs, a centenial plan to be completed (whether it refered to weapons or shue laces), food and clothes rations, and last but not least the dreaded secred police. The secret police was infiltrated on every street and every block of flats (everybodyknows the communist blocks of flats that housed over a hundred people in spaces that would fulfill the needs of fifty), the agentshad to write weekly reports about what their neighbours had been doing ... and the list could go on forever. This is only a very small pictureof the world of 1984 and that of the communist countries. The resemblance between the two is striking but that is not the issue right now. In the world of 2005, even though Big Brother is just a television show, and even though there is no evident secret police and the party terror is missing, the system remains the same. People are traped in their everyday routine, are constrained by the necesity (or obsession for not so few) of making money, are tv brain washed and alone. And of course, cronically bored. People do not live. Their society sucks. Their life sucks. And when you meet somebody that seems to be really living, he's definetly on drugs :)). Winston Smith's world is realeased in a new version in 2005.