Back in New York City.

Since March 8 I'm back in NYC. In the weeks to come I expect to blog less because most days are spent behind a laptop. However, upcoming weeks are going to be interesting:

• Together with Massimo I'll be going to the gym at least three times a week for rowing. I lost almost 10 kilograms in the Congo last time, so the idea is to try to avoid adding too much in the months to come. And with several colleagues I'll squash as well once or twice a week;
• I received a small office at Columbia, but probably will still be working a lot in coffeeshops;
• April 12-15 the MPSA conference takes place in Chicago where I present two papers: 1. One on migration, and 2. one (together with Macartan) about our Voix des Kivus project. Both, unfortunately, still have to be written;
• By the end of this week Macartan, Raul and me have a deadline to hand in a revision of a paper we submitted to a prestigious journal. I'm currently running some extra simulations on Columbia University's supercomputer, we are replicating all our results (both the formal and statistical ones) one more time to be sure that everything is correct, etc.
• By the beginning of April our final report for the Tuungane evaluation has to be in. Yes, the evaluation of the 5 year Tuungane project - the project that is the reason for the existence of this blog. More (among others the results!) to come;
• Then in May I'm likely to be back in the Congo again - with Macartan and Raul. There are two reasons: 1. To present the findings of the evaluation to shareholders, and 2. To meet up with my research team that is currently still in the field to collect data for the dissertation.

Then by the end of May the semester is already over again. In upcoming months, though, it is write, write and write. I will be on the jobmarket in Fall 2013 so have 2.5 semesters to turn the ideas in my head and all all the piles of data into a dissertation.

Brooklyn

Last Tuesday together with colleagues Ali and Pierce we visited Neelan in Brooklyn to work in the coffeeshops there. It was fantastic. The sun shined. We visited the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. And at 11pm we ended our day of work with a whisky in a spacious bar sitting on a leather sofa next to a fireplace. It's good to be back.

Ali and Neelan. Neelan is carrying data from his fieldwork in India.

Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.