About a year ago I started something that, a few days ago, came to a conclusion - but to be fair, it's more a milestone than a conclusion.
In August of last year (2008), I applied for a job at Ghent University. In the months that followed I went through the selection process, and after some hurdles I got selected. In April of this year (2009), I started on my new job. And now, six months later, my trial period is over. After a very good evaluation, I was appointed to the job, starting October 1st.
It took me over a year to get so far, but now I've reached what I was aiming for since then. But of course, this is just the start of it all. I have the rest of my life's working career ahead of me at Ghent University. And I'm still getting started, with a lot of plans to accomplish, projects to start, task being assigned, ... I'll know what to do the next few years.
But now that I've reached some stability on the work front, I might think of a new challenge, some new projects to start, or some overall reorganisation of the goals and priorities in my life. I've been thinking of a few, some silly or ridiculous, others infeasible (at least on my own), or down right impossible ways to pass time:
- Find a way of solving any Rubik's cube in maximum 21 steps. The current proof says maximum 22 steps are needed.
- Write a socio-philosophical essay addressing some effects of globalism : economy, environment, politics, communication, pluralism, culture, migration.
- Now that, Gianfranco Gentile, a researcher of Ghent University has discovered that dark matter is needed to explain certain behavior in galaxies, it might be time to create a theory combining classic, relativistic and quantum mechanics together with dark matter.
- Work on something revolutionary to save energy, use available energy more efficiently, not only by technology, but also by a change of mentality.
- Build a render farm.
- Start beatboxing.
- Research methods of efficiently stacking solids, and by extension, deformable solids (f.e. a sealed bag containing a liquid).
But some are more realistic so I'll focus on those :
- Learn to solve a Rubik's Cube. This is trivial, but I would like to find it by myself.
- Pick up playing the piano again.
- Read more, by which I mean : books, literature.
Or I could just try to look for goals in my work, find a girlfriend, buy a house, get married, start a family and raise some children.