Changes

I submitted my PhD thesis back in September 2020 (which you can now find here or on the arXiv) in some of the most unusual circumstances amid the Covid-19 pandemic. In Melbourne, that meant arguably one of the hardest lockdowns in the world, but most importantly for me, it implied writing in isolation with hardly any movement (perhaps only with cycling within a 5km radius and my girlfriend to keep me sane), and furthermore, it implied that I wouldn't have a teaching job, as the university cut most of the teaching assistants (whom on the first half of the year were working online), so no steady income to keep me going while I waited for the outcome of the thesis.

Long story short, I'm moving to Taipei, Taiwan, most probably in March if all goes well, to work at the Foxconn Quantum Computing Centre, led by Prof. Min-Hsiu Hsieh, who incidentally was at UTS, in Sydney, until the end of last year. Meanwhile, however, I'm spending this time back in Mexico City. It's strange, but even when I've lived here almost my entire life, I'm still not comfortable with a lot of things. Looking back and thinking of the future, it's a bit sad, but I don't think I would like spending the rest of my life or to finally settle (which at some point I think I'd need) right here. And it ends up being a bit of a dilemma because I never felt entirely comfortable or at home neither in Edinburgh nor in Melbourne, where I had the fortune to live for more than a year. Hopefully I'll (or rather I should say "we'll") figure this out during my time in Taiwan, as I certainly would like to get some stability after this postdoc.

Among other things it was pretty stressful flying back home, specially cause I had to transit through Los Angeles. Similarly, I'm not very excited about my time in Mexico and although I would love to see family and friends, I'm essentially gonna try and keep it as a oneish-month layover before I head to Taiwan. On the positive side it's a good chance to try and learn a bit of Mandarin Chinese and enjoy the food that I've been missing for a while.