News on my brother:

First of all: biopsy results are back. It's benign! Chemotherapy will be fully determined while my brother recovers after the biopsy. In the meantime doctors will do additional tests on the sample.

Biopsy went not without complications. I'm not even close to understanding everything that my mother and uncle told me, but here's what I gathered:

- There was a problem with CSF pressure soon after the surgeons inserted most of the instruments for biopsy.

- Soon after they got their sample my brother's blood pressure started to spike. Because of that, surgery took almost twice as long as it was planned.

Truth be told, compared to other possible complications (list contained things like "we will puncture what isolates possible cancer from the rest of the body and release it" and "brain stem damage") it sounds like nothing. It isn't, but it would be the understatement of the year if I were to say "it could have been worse".

I will keep you updated. Big thank you for your support and kind words! :)

Update on me:

I met with my new adviser/guide with whom I will be assisting in research. While not the superconductor guru that I've mentioned last time… it's actually even better. The bulk of his research is in the homotopy theory and dualities that I have picked up after lm showed me the ropes during one of our discussions at IRC.

Another person I met is my successor who will work with my former adviser. Truth be told I don't know if she's that smart or it was me who didn't do much for the past year, but after barely four hours I got her up to speed with all of the fruits of my research projects. I feel really disturbed while talking to her for some reason.

Other than that, I have realised one of the problems with getting stipends. It's talking to people from finances! Two hours of being talked to like I'm autistic for getting GPA-based scholarship on maths and physics… :/

Oh, and I have picked up fencing for my physical activity block. Costs quite a bit, but I have always wanted to try it out and after today's practice I would be a filthy liar if I would say anything other than "it was so friggin' cool!". :D