Friday, December 11, 2009

What's happening to S?


1. A student who didn't have enough money to pay her rent had resorted to being a call girl to to go on with her study. Well, the story doesn't sound very rosy, but doesn't seem to be very unique neither. Anyway, not until the London-based student-cum-escort decided to write a diary, and as she just happened to be living in the 21st century, her diary was on a website call blogspot.com . And her writting just happened to be so funny, witty and interesting (even when you exclude the s-e-x factor) that it gained her the some blogger of the year precious prize. The blog caught the blue eye of a publisher, and next thing she became the author of a best-selling book (The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl). And then the book became a TV series that stared Bille Piper (was she the one who started in the late 90s with Britney Spears?) with killer legs and cleavage...

Well, she is hot blogger, whichever way you want to understand it. Yet she maintained to be anonymous under her pen name "Belle De Jour" for many years. There have been many speculation about who she was (an erotic author? a middle-aged bald man? an annoying male journalist?). Yet she remained to be a mystery frequent blogger even when she quit the "business".

Until last month, under some unpleasant fear and circumstances, she decided to come out from the dark. And the student-turn-call girl-turn-hot blogger -turn author finally turned out to be a Dr Brooke Magnanti - a research scientist who is trying to cure cancer and save children!
While doing her PhD (on some difficult chemistry subject that I don't understand), some financial situations had made her decide to be a part-time escort as it gave her the money but didn't take much of her time, - so that, guess!, she could focus on writing her doctoral final thesis on some life-saving subject. (Anyway, no wonder she chose low-pay high-reward science over a £300/hour job in the end)
2. Another PhD student, this time from Singapore - a scholar of some serious government-funded science research center , went home for a holiday. The story was getting boring, I know, until she decided to take a nudity stroll around in Holland Village with a Sweddish guy - absolutely without any clothes "just for the thrill of it".
They got arrested (shortly) for public offense. But luckily, her research institue which is run by liberal scientists, had decided to keep her scholarship after giving her some little warning.
So what's really happening to S-C-I-E-N-CE? And to our beloved PhDs?
And for you, my friends, PhD or not, enjoy your lovely weekend...

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Nhớ Sài Gòn

Sao mình chả nhớ Hà Nội tí nào mới lạ chứ. Chả nhẽ cuối tuần bắt cái xe đò (Jetstar) về chơi cho đỡ nhớ?