Doctorate on hold

For the past few months, I have thought that my second doctoral exam (aka IBR 2) would be held on Wednesday, 5 June. On the basis of this, we booked a flight on 6 June which would be the first stage in a two week holiday, which would culminate in the degree awarding ceremony in Edinburgh on 19 June.

Last night, I received an email from the university with an official invitation to the exam (these are sent two weeks before every exam). I was unable to open the PDF attachment at home because the document used some kind of extension which my alternate PDF reader (ie not Adobe Acrobat) could not read. So much for the P in PDF, which stands for 'portable'. So I sent the letter to my work email and read it this morning with Acrobat.

I have royally screwed up: it turns out that the exam will be held on 6 June at which time I will be in an airplane making its way to Barcelona! I quickly checked with our travel agent to see whether it would be possible to fly later on the same day or on the following day, but luck was not on my side. I also notified the university; I asked whether it would be possible to be examined personally whilst in Edinburgh, but again, no luck.

This means that I will only be able to take IBR 2 in December - at the same time (but hopefully not the same date) when I will be taking the IBR 3 exam. I hope that taking IBR 3 is not contingent upon passing IBR 2. So my doctoral studies are on hold for six months!

After performing part of the literature survey in April, I decided to put that activity on hold and turn my attention to passing the exam. Now that the opportunity to take the exam has been delayed, I may as well return my attention to preparing material for the doctorate itself. I think that I will spend the next few months preparing the research proposal: after all, I know how to write the proposal (IBR 1) and I have most of the necessary information. Using the downtime now will allow me to save time later on.

Delicate truth

I'm amazed at myself for mentioning John Le Carre whilst writing about Tom Clancy: there is a world of difference between them and Clancy is no match for Le Carre as a writer. The book which I was writing about, Clancy's "Red Rabbit", was a cold war story primarily about a Russian KGB agent who decided to defect (so far, so good). The story was told in simple language and it was fairly clear from the beginning what was going to happen. I only mentioned Le Carre because some criticism had been leveled at Clancy because there was "no action" in his book (presumably as opposed to other books of his); there is frequently "no action" in Le Carre's work either, but I know whose books I prefer to read. 

Le Carre writes beautiful prose and it was a joy simply to read the opening page of his latest book, "A delicate truth", which I read over the weekend.

Continuing the author's penchant for finding new locations for his work, this one is initially set in Gibraltar before moving to the more familiar locations of Cornwall and London. As frequently happens with Le Carre, I had very little idea of where the book was heading until it was almost finished, meaning that I'll have to read it again shortly in order to improve my understanding.

In common with some of his later work, I suppose that this book is as much about whistle blowing as it is about anything else (like the lack of government oversight).

I don't want to write very much about the book yet because I didn't really understand it (obviously I understood the words, but I'm not sure what the author's intentions were) and I don't want to give away any of the plot