My first blog

For a change, my professor inspired me...

For those that read this, my name is Eric-Wubbo Lameijer, and I am a PhD-student in medicinal chemistry and computer science in Leiden, the Netherlands. I certainly had read about blogs a seemingly long time ago, in the New Scientist, which ran an article about how blogs were being used in China to express forbidden political opinions. However, expressing political opinions did not attract much interest to blogging from most Chinese - until a Chinese woman began to publish her sex diaries.

I do not intend to publish my sex-life online. Since I have the reputation of being a computer programmer, you readers may truly or falsely content theirselves with the illusion that I have no sex life to write of. What interests me, however, is thinking, and learning, and improving myself. I like very much to learn about myself and the world, perhaps a reason why I became a scientist. Sometimes, when praying or meditating or cycling, I get ideas which I jot down. Perhaps a blog is a nice spot to do so too. Since thoughts caught in the mind of one person may be powerful, but if they are allowed to run free and spark other thoughts, they can be much more fertile. I hope therefore that this may develop in a sex site for mental sex.

To return to my professor. He is setting up a cheminformatics company, and apparently had read the BusinessWeek on how blogging is going to transform business. However, even after reading the article he had not understood what it was. Of course, this may be a common feature of business magazines; perhaps their task is to impress executives with the need to work on X, after which the executive, blissfully unaware about what X exactly is, commands his hopefully more knowledgeable subordinates to do X "since it is obviously the next trend."

I did tell him something about blogs which I hoped was accurate. But then I thought: Why not experiment with it? So here I am. May this blog be the record of my thinking and learning, and may it perhaps help others gain more insight in themselves and the world. And may it inspire them to go together with me on such a journey, distant though we may be on this planet.

Thought of today:

It is very easy to keep ourselves busy with thousands of tasks. But how often do we ask ourselves whether we do them because doing them is important or because we use to do them and other things which we actually should do seem too difficult or frightening?

Perhaps it is good to write down sometimes which tasks you have to do, and which you want to do, and then grade them on how important doing them really is.