Serbian Salty Sticks
Ingredients:

• 250g butter
• 1 egg + 1 egg yolk
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1 yeast bag
• 1 shot glass of milk
• 2 spoonfulls of sunflower oil
• 8-14 spoonfulls of flour — enough to make it not sticky

Mix milk, yeast and sugar, let it sit.
Mix butter, yeast mix, eggs, salt and oil, add flour 2 spoons at a time, mix well.
When it looks firm enough to knead, do so.
Don’t let it become too hard from too much flour.
Spread flat, 1 cm thick, beat another whole egg, spread over the whole thing.
Cut in strips (2×8 cm approx.), put on a baking tray, bake at 250º C for a few minutes (before they get brown on top).

Must say I haven’t tried myself, but these things were yummy when I tried them!

¿Tan difícil es hacer bien las cosas?

Probably the only thing worth saving from those lists are these quotations I posted there because I found them funny and/or inspiring:

Such is life; and we are but as grass that is cut down, and put into the oven and baked. — Three Men in a Boat, J. K. Jerome.

Señor, dame serenidad para aceptar las cosas que no puedo cambiar, valor para cambiar las que sí puedo, y sabiduría para distinguir las unas de las otras. — Popular, through K. V.

Prefiero morir dormido como mi abuelo que no gritando acojonado como sus pasajeros. — Vuelo 023, Luis Montero.

Most visitors to the North Pole head south next. — On the “Get out” Section of the “North Pole” entry in wikitravel

Link.

Polyphasic sleep seems a bit radical for me right now, for one, I feel lacking goals at the moment, and I’m not very motivated, in general, to do many things or entertain myself other than reading on the computer. So the thought of having five extra hours a day to browse the internet is definitely not appealing. I hope it will be as soon as I start doing something about my life.

In the course of this long web browsing session I’ve also found out about segmented sleep, which probably was the way humankind slept all the way up to the Industrial Age and artificial lighting.

—So, what happened to it?—they asked, eyes wide open.

—We never knew whether that’d be the last time we would ever eat it. And we fished them to extinction. Nobody will ever be able to see them again.

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be your mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well loved one,
walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.

Of course, I couldn’t say whether I was actually there in a different dream or just "in the dream I had been there before." I do remember a similar highway, but much bigger and complex, from (possibly) another dream a long time ago…

– Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)
3rd president of the US
Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)

I was happy and excited to see the Uni, which in this version of Bielefeld was near the train station—an arrangement vagely familiar, perhaps from another dream about Bielefeld. I came in and met some of the people I had been with during that year. We were talking and things would be happening around us. I asked about people, they told me about people…

And then I woke up, and the dream with its vivid colors waned leaving just reality—and I felt very sad at first that I was in Madrid and not in Bielefeld, wishing I had never left…

As I write this the dream is fading away as every dream does as soon as I come back to awakeness. I’m not sad or mad that I’m not in Bielefeld, but the truth is, I haven’t been there since the Erasmus came to an end…

So a few months ago I set up a plan that would allow me to pursue my Ph. D. to end while at the same time exploring the computer side (hopefully) enough to make a decision by the time it should be taken: I would apply for admission to the Master’s Degree program in Computer Science at the UCM, and take a few courses at the same time that I write my thesis. By the end of my contract (April 2009) I would be able to decide whether to jump to a post-doc in physics or to finish studying CS. The financial side of the second option would be taken care of by the interest-free loans the Spanish Government offers for these MD studies.

And then two weeks ago I found out about the (remote) posibility of a one year position available in Paris, which would probably begin right after my contract ends and would allow me to defend my thesis a bit later. Now, if I, as planned, begin the CS studies this year, I might have some trouble even finishing properly the very few courses I would enroll in this year. On the other hand, it would mean another year of guaranteed income. But it would also mean having to put off the “Computer Question” for another year.

Now, stepping out of the academia sounds like a quite permanent step, but lately I’ve been wondering whether to take a deep breath and jump into the void, or whether to stick to more solid–but maybe not so exciting–ground. There are many things I’d enjoy doing for a science career, but right now I’d be stuck to pretty much what I’m doing right now for a while, which doesn’t thrill me that much anymore. But again, there are no guarantees that it will be better on the other side.

There will be answers, eventually…