Looming future
May. 17th, 2009 05:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livMy Swedish friends continue trying to say goodbye to me at every opportunity. At least this gives me excuses to be sociable, and May to June is the most sociable time of year here anyway; the weather is fine enough and the days are long enough, but it's not the height of summer when everyone goes to the country or away on holiday.
So this week has included another BBQ, this time with Joanna's friend YF. It was veggie, as several of YF's crowd keep fairly kosher (who knew there was such a group of people in Stockholm?!), so I brought a big box of roughly chopped vegetables and some skewers, and people had fun making colour coordinated kebabs.
And Friday afternoon / evening I went to hang out with SA, and we decided that we were both too tired to try to do anything energetic or cook, so we went out to a favourite restaurant of hers, Malaysia. It has a very nice atmosphere, almost touching on the classic country pub style, with lots of dark, comfortable furnishings, though of course the decor is far Eastern rather than English. And the food was very tasty; not cheap, but not insanely expensive by Stockholm standards either. Unlike a lot of oriental restaurants, they had tasty and interesting desserts, too!
I went to shul on Saturday, mainly because I was hoping to learn from R Wiener who was visiting from England to celebrate the fact that we have joined the European Masorti movement. This was a bit of a disappointment, because R Wiener only talked about the Masorti movement in his sermon, not any Torah at all, and wasn't invited to lead the discussion afterwards (?!). But Joanna and a couple of others were present for that, and we had a good informal learning session. Then I walked Joanna most of the way home, which is out of my way rather but it's a gorgeous walk along the waterfront in the sunshine, and it was great to get an opportunity to catch up.
Realistically, I do need to be thinking about the future. I don't have many job prospects open, so it's most likely that I won't have a job lined up by the time this position finishes at the end of June. Possibilities:
hatam_soferet has been trying to convince me to spend the summer learning at a Yeshiva, probably Drisha. I think this makes a fair amount of sense, because the chances of getting a job that would clash with that are pretty slim, and I might as well start again with job hunting later in the summer. It's slightly expensive (especially in a recession and with no clear job prospects!), but I would love the chance for several weeks of focused Jewish learning soooo much that I think it's worth it.
I need to talk to various people to make that happen, not least parents. I think I'll give formal notice to my boss tomorrow, and therefore aim to finish at midsummer rather than the end of June. That will give me a week or so to move my life back to England, before potentially travelling to NY for the learning. If I do make the trip I'll certainly leave a week or so free after the programme finishes for visiting people in NorAm. Family stuff is a bit complicated at the moment, which is another reason to leave Sweden a little early rather than extending things for a couple of weeks, as I was previously thinking. We'll see. Actually realizing that I only have, at best, six weeks more of employment is pretty scary, but I do still optimistically believe that my life is going to contain nice things and even remunerated nice things.
So this week has included another BBQ, this time with Joanna's friend YF. It was veggie, as several of YF's crowd keep fairly kosher (who knew there was such a group of people in Stockholm?!), so I brought a big box of roughly chopped vegetables and some skewers, and people had fun making colour coordinated kebabs.
And Friday afternoon / evening I went to hang out with SA, and we decided that we were both too tired to try to do anything energetic or cook, so we went out to a favourite restaurant of hers, Malaysia. It has a very nice atmosphere, almost touching on the classic country pub style, with lots of dark, comfortable furnishings, though of course the decor is far Eastern rather than English. And the food was very tasty; not cheap, but not insanely expensive by Stockholm standards either. Unlike a lot of oriental restaurants, they had tasty and interesting desserts, too!
I went to shul on Saturday, mainly because I was hoping to learn from R Wiener who was visiting from England to celebrate the fact that we have joined the European Masorti movement. This was a bit of a disappointment, because R Wiener only talked about the Masorti movement in his sermon, not any Torah at all, and wasn't invited to lead the discussion afterwards (?!). But Joanna and a couple of others were present for that, and we had a good informal learning session. Then I walked Joanna most of the way home, which is out of my way rather but it's a gorgeous walk along the waterfront in the sunshine, and it was great to get an opportunity to catch up.
Realistically, I do need to be thinking about the future. I don't have many job prospects open, so it's most likely that I won't have a job lined up by the time this position finishes at the end of June. Possibilities:
- I'm waiting to hear about the Leicester post-doc, where I failed to meet the actual professor.
- I have a couple of applications for lecturing jobs sent out on spec (Bradford and Cardiff), but I don't hold out great hopes because the first one I sent in after the deadline, and the second one I stupidly sent the wrong version of the file, and although I corrected it with a chasing email five minutes later, that doesn't make a good impression!)
- I may theoretically still get something from the good-looking Cambridge guy, but I pretty much need to apply for my own funding and there's a lot of uncertainty
hatam_soferet has been trying to convince me to spend the summer learning at a Yeshiva, probably Drisha. I think this makes a fair amount of sense, because the chances of getting a job that would clash with that are pretty slim, and I might as well start again with job hunting later in the summer. It's slightly expensive (especially in a recession and with no clear job prospects!), but I would love the chance for several weeks of focused Jewish learning soooo much that I think it's worth it. I need to talk to various people to make that happen, not least parents. I think I'll give formal notice to my boss tomorrow, and therefore aim to finish at midsummer rather than the end of June. That will give me a week or so to move my life back to England, before potentially travelling to NY for the learning. If I do make the trip I'll certainly leave a week or so free after the programme finishes for visiting people in NorAm. Family stuff is a bit complicated at the moment, which is another reason to leave Sweden a little early rather than extending things for a couple of weeks, as I was previously thinking. We'll see. Actually realizing that I only have, at best, six weeks more of employment is pretty scary, but I do still optimistically believe that my life is going to contain nice things and even remunerated nice things.
