6th Oct 2006

Today I have a 12 o’clock meeting with Professor Uchimura, a potential supervisor…and as I’ve spent the morning fidgeting about in my room arranging and rearranging the few things which are in my room and showing the admin office of my halls my shiny new passbook so they may extract money out of me. I haven’t prepared for this meeting at all. He asks what I want to do. I try and refrain from saying ‘ooooh I don’t mind! I mean it’s only a PHd…not like it’s ground breaking or anything’ and instead settle for something vague like the whole topic of engineering seismology…it doesn’t go down too well…and there’s also the added issue of communication. I’m not sure expressing myself to him is going to be the easiest thing in the world…I think most people are having difficulty understanding my accent. He then goes on to describe what his current research things are at the moment and due to my lack of original ideas I am told I should really go see Professor Towhata…not such a good meeting I thinks…

The rest of the afternoon is spent trying to set up my computer on the college network, getting my email account set up so a can receive all the spam in the world through college email (great!) and to some degree getting to know some of the people in my lab.
This day is rather unproductive… oh well.