Today was pretty good. I bounced the review over to my boss and he seems to like it, it certainly represents a big chunk of work on my part.
After I'd handed that over in the morning I didn't do a great deal else (relatively speaking). I started getting a job application together for a position in New York. I showed the advertisement to my boss and he replied "I know this woman". I was quite surprised but it turned out that she had just started her Ph.D. when my boss was a post-doc with a guy at MIT and they still keep in touch. He said I should send her an email and do some name dropping and see if it has any effect. I like the position, but it isn't supposed to start until August 2003 and so I asked if the date could be brought forward. My boss says she already has funding from the NSF, so it might be possible. If not there's always Bozeman, Montana.
Even the slight possibility of living and working in Manhattan is rather humorous. I've mentioned many times to people that after living in Miami, that there was only two places more expensive to live, San Francisco and New York...
One-bedroom apartments close to the University go from a minimum of $1000 and rapidly accelerate upwards. In other words I would expect to be paying approximately $15,000 a year in rent. That's enough to take home to Australia and put a big deposit on a nice house, even with the current overblown real estate market.
I received an email from the professor in New York which said that the position couldn't start any earlier than August 1st because she would be away on leave. This makes things more difficult since I wouldn't have a paying job for 10 months before I had to try and set up shop in New York.
One possibility is to apply for a working holiday visa to Canada. This programme opens up January 2nd 2003, and the processing apparently takes 4-6 weeks to go through. This way I could earn some money and have a holiday before I head to New York. That's if I get the job, otherwise I guess I head to Montana and save some up some cash there. Also by about May 2003, I'll know if I've had any luck in the green card lottery which would make it a lot easier to get a job wherever I liked.