Of music, cycling and physics

Following my trip to Uruguay, I took an easy training week to allow the body to heal from the race efforts - and wounds :(. With the extra time, I worked a little more on my dissertation, and prepared an abstract for the "Mathematical Aspects of Quantum Chaos" conference. This will take place in Montreal in early June, and I hope to be there for a chance of presenting my work and getting some feedback before my defense. I also made first contact with a group in München which has an open Ph.D. position I intend to apply. The position is still open and at least on paper I fulfill the requirements. Now I have to wait for recommendation letters, possible interviews, and hope for the best :) .

This week, I started working on some new calculations for some old graphs - some consistency tests detected minor flaws, which I intend to correct before putting them down on paper for my diss. Also got back to the regular training regimen, with the first Build week of the season. Some intervals and speed work - a nice change from the endurace-focused base weeks of the previous months. Can't wait to get some more racing :)
Edit: I forgot to add (how modest!): last weekend I won another race, a stage from "Circuito Vale dos Sinos de Ciclismo", which took place in Parobe. The team performed flawlessly, and besides my victory, we also managed a 3rd and a 5th spot - filling the podium with our orange jerseys :)

To top it off, I also went to two concerts this week. On Tuesday, OSPA played the Polovetsian Dances, from Borodin, and Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony, to a full house. Yesterday, courtesy of the German Consulate, we heard the Tübinger Kammerorchester - with their wonderful solist, Julia Galic. Really, really good. Music has been an integral part of my activities - be it listening to loud rock (or piano concerts!) on the car while driving, or some Bossa Nova on my headphones while reading articles or working on my diss - it keeps the brain cells happy, it seems - couple that with chocolate and caffeine, and voilà!