Been a day of two halves. Felt really low this morning after receiving a scathing review of a proposal due in at 22:00 today, from someone who sent it in Russian to a colleague who I had asked to lead this proposal. After translating it using google I found out that they had completely misunderstood the application and they were telling my colleague it was a waste of everyone's time. The arrogance of that man. Then I got a black mark from a UK funding body after two proposals last year had been ranked in the bottom half of their round ranking tables. One proposal had scored over 80%. Vicious. I got a response from one of the top managers here, which totally failed to answer the question I had posed. Grrrrr.
The afternoon was far better and was able to progress some documentation of the PhD theme in advanced materials. Still have to work on the engineering side. A colleague was claiming to be running the NU side of a major EU proposal and then I found out it was one that I helped write back in the UK. Had a fun lecture with the students on presentation skills. And finally submitted the proposal by the deadline - on to the next ones.
It was a day of wishing for clearer, more refined policies to be in place. But it's not all great back in the UK. Having tried to open up a bank account in the UK in November, we are now almost there. Though getting internet access may take longer. Still awaiting to hear from the council tax office in Eastbourne after two months of trying. The world may be getting smaller, but the distance between customer and (certain) service departments is getting larger!
Ray
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