I finally decided to start writing a journal. It's gonna take me some time,
but I hope it is more lasting than an email. I like the idea to look back and
see some kind of a development :-)
For those who have deleted or not received them, my first mass
mails are also available.
Too bad that I didn't start earlier with the journal, there definitively already
was a whole bunch of developments during my stay here.
In this first note I will try to give an overview about what happened the last
month, trying to remember how I felt, though I'm somewhat biased, having my
current point of view. Sorry for that stuff having become so extensive...
On Wednesday, August 16th my flight to Vancouver was scheduled to leave. Although
I left everything for the last minute everything worked out fine and I made
it to the airport even half an hour too early (which I shouldn't be credited
for but my father). I met Stefan, one of the two other German guys on this visiting
program from the computer science department in Darmstadt, and his girlfriend
Maria at the airport. The flight was canceled due to technical problems with
the airplane and after about four hours of waiting and one hour searching for
another flight (Stefan: "Aber meine Mutter hat am Handy gesagt, es gibt
noch Flüge nach Toronto") we finally managed to get a flight to JFK
airport, New York. In the meantime we had met Antje, another German student
on the way to UBC, sponsored by the DAAD.
Well, to say it in short (for I realize the first month would fill a little
book in this style), we flew to JFK, got some (4) hours of sleep in the Best
Western (sponsored by Lufthansa) and a connection flight with American Airlines
to Vancouver. I wanted to see the statue of liberty, but it was 1:30 a.m. when
we arrived in the hotel, we had to leave for airport at 6:00 a.m. and a cab
to downtown would have driven one hour and costed 45 $US one way.
Arrived at UBC in the afternoon of Friday, 18th (having used the [quite cheap] limousine service :) Stefan and I had to look for accomodation for the first two weeks. After some free phone calls from International House we finally managed to get accomodation at the youth hostel International Housing at Jericho Beach near campus (starting the next day, thus we stayed at the Vancouver school of theology on campus for the first night - they had only rooms free for one day :-)
By the way, as soon as we arrived in Vancouver, we switched to talking English; it's quite practical to be able to ask for a missing vocabulary - not possible when talking to native speakers (though quite a lot of people speak German on campus!). We spent the first days doing some organizational stuff on campus, buying bikes and getting used to the city. On Monday, 21st we met Andy, the third German guy on the program. He stayed at a friend's place in West Vancouver for the first two weeks. In Germany he had told a friend that he was looking for accomodation for the first weeks and this friend managed to have a friend in Vancouver, so he phoned him and Andy could stay with him. Quite cool was that this vancouverite guy was there for the first five days Andy was there and then had to leave for two weeks for business reasons. So, Andy had "his own" appartment and was even encouraged to invite us. One time we watched some rented movies at his place that just were in the theatres in Germany :-)
We had also a real good time experiencing the pubs in downtown, burning money - a beer is about 4.5 dollars and you're supposed to give between ten and 15 percent tip. With one canadian dollar being worth about 1.5 german marks a beer turned out to cost 7.5 DM !!! Bad news for the Germans, real used to drinking beer.
Nevertheless I really fall in love with this city - everything was so green
and seemed to be alive. Also the campus(above) is not what I was used to from
Darmstadt: squirrels running around like cats in Germany, breathtaking views
of the sea. Lots of parks in whole Vancouver, each giving a sense of piece and
freedom, these were my first impressions.
Stefan, Andy, Antje and me spent Saturday hiking in a beautiful park and on Sunday Andy and me did the Grouse Grind, a short hiking trail with lots of elevation gain ane beautifaul views.
Starting on Monday, 28th, this week was subject to the international students
orientation. Organized by International House, we had several social events
and met lots of international students - absolut perfect to make new friends,
everyone is happy to meet new people! Stefan, Andy and me stuck a little bit
together in the beginning,
meeting new people always "im Dreierpack", but we very soon realized
that it would be good to mingle sometimes. I think we found a very good mixture
of being together and going our own ways - fortunately, we had taken care before
not to live together in a flat, so there were no problems at all.
This week actually was a big party, meeting people and being in the mood of vacation. It was quite cheap, though, for we were on campus often and the beer here is only 2.75 bucks :-) There were also some events we had paid for ahead, like an evening dinner, a dinner boat cruise and a city tour. Besides this, there was also quite a lot of free time that I mainly used to finish a paper I still wanted to write for our software engineering project (it's almost finished now :-) and figuring out a way to put my pictures on my website automatically (by the way, deinstalling visual age for java, I accidentally threw away all my work today :.-( ).
On Friday we moved into Fairview (where I'm currently sitting, writing this :-), our residence for the next eight months. We were quite happy to leave the youth hostel for it was quite inconvenient to bicycle to UBC each morning (UBC is located on a stupid hill, so wherever you go, you'll have a hard time going up some steep streets when you come back). The residence was super-untidy when we arrived, it seemed like the former inhibitants just left, there was a homo-milk (homogenized) in the fridge that was good until June, 7th - my roommates told me it moved! The first thing we did was to clean the kitchen, kind of a cleaning party :-)
I'm very lucky with my roommates; there are two mexican guys, Mariano and Emanuel. Mariano is in his first year of computer engineering, he likes cooking, plays the guitar and is a really funny guy. Emanuel has got a bachelor in commerce and is now working on another bachelor in sociology. He will only be here for one term, too bad for you can have lots of fun with him. My third roommate, Patrick, is Canadian. He plays Rugby and well, he looks like; big and strong - he can protect the house ;-) He's in his second year of human kinetics, so he knows quite a lot of girls and knows about every party going on :-)
On the weekend, Andy, Stefan and me went to an indycar race that took place in downtown. For we were late we didn't pay entrance fee, but watched from outside. That was really quite cool, despite the fact that my bagpack was stolen when I didn't pay attention. Luckily, nothing important was inside - Stefan and Andy both had their passports in their bagpacks! This was the first time, I experienced something in Vancouver I did not like and I realized that not everything is better here! (Whatever, I am trying to watch my stuff now and have learned something - and in a retrospective, it hardly matters. )
This was the week, courses started officially. Well, officially, but graduate courses started one week later :-) This gave me again some time to work on the paper and the website, as well as doing some partying and meeting people. I also took one undergrad course in psychology, cognition and perception and I really do like it. The prof. has got a message I get it - I'm really happy to have chosen this course.
I've mentioned graduate and undergraduate, so I should tell some words about
the system here:
Students begin their studies as undergraduates, they have got twelve years of
school and start with their studies in a very broad area such as science or
arts. In their second year they start specialicing in a topic such as computer
science or psychology and after four years they usually finish their bachelor.
Most of the students leave university at this point, thus the few remaining
are treated VERY well. They are (the chosen) graduate students; in computer
science, for example, each of the ca. 60 graduate students has an office he
shares with two or three other students, there is the graduate students society,
that organizes events for grad students and lots more.
Probably the most important difference I felt to Darmstadt is that all (!) professors
really care about their students, especially the grad students. In some speeches
to welcome the new grad students for this year (!) I became aware that professors
here contribute to the fact that they do need grad students and that they are
proud of having very good ones. We were also told that a great deal of the research
in the department is carried out by graduate students, which might also apply
to Darmstadt. My understanding is that profs in Germany seldomly emphasize this,
though.
My brother Carsten (currently staying in Yale) commented on this paragraph the
other day:
"When students have their bachelor's degree, they are normally in a position
which could be compared to the status just before beginning the diploma thesis
in Germany (they normally have already 3-4 years of study done) [...] and Diplomanden
for sure do a major part of research in Germany, too."
I think he's right, I compared the status here to the one I had in Germany right
before coming here - hopefully, it will be more like this when I come back to
finish my diploma thesis :-)
On Saturday, there was a PhD party from a German computer science student, Bettina. Everyone had to dress up quite formally (you had to wear a tie) and bring some alcohol (it is really expensive over here, so there are quite a lot of "bring it your own" parties). There were lots of recipes for cocktails all over the place and also all ingredients one needed, so we had a REALLY good time there :-) It was kind of weird, there were also three profs around and nobody cared about that, you are judged as a prof or a student or something else there, but just a nice person you enjoy talking to (ok, perhaps somewhat exaggerated, but it felt like this).
I was really surprised of myself that I managed to get up after less than four hours of sleep to go to a hike with some people from Fairview; I set my alarm clock to ring at seven, just in case I wanted to go...when it rang, I thought "oh, shit, that's too early...well, maybe, the weather is really bad, so I don't have to go...looking out of the window I saw the sun shining with not even one cloud on the sky and finally I told myself it's not good to stay in bed when it's such a nice day. Remarkably, I did not have any kind of hang-over, although I definitively was really drunk the day before - Andy had bad luck with this :-)
I thought this hike's gonna be kind of weird, as the only guy amongst seven
girls, but actually it was big fun.
From the top of the mountain we hiked up I had some of the most breathtaking
views in my life. Again it was over a kilometer of elevation gain, but this
time it wasn't that steep, we went on quite slowly and enjoyed nature. I could
really have kicked my ass for not taking my camera with me, but I didn't have
any more time to look for it in the morning.
A really tough one! I wasn't sure about which courses to take, so I attended
some more than usual...
From everyone I was told only to take three courses. Together with a teaching
assistantship or a research assistantship that would be time-consuming enough...
Well, I was sure that I wanted to take "artificial intelligence 1"
and "coginition and perception", but I was absolutely unsure about
the third course. I ended up with attending nine courses this week and finally
made up my mind to take "computational geometry" and audit "topics
of programming languages" sometimes.
I also want to attend the LCI (laboratory for computational intelligence) forum
and maybe a reading group on AI.
Uh, one bad thing about my schedule: Monday, Wednesday and Friday class at 8:00 a.m., at least it's psychology and real interesting. I realized, though, that I'm quite good at studying in the morning, I'm just not good at getting up! Tuesday and Thursday I got classes at 9:30 a.m., at least some better. However, every day in week I am finishes with mandatory classes at 11:00 a.m. Then there is only voluntary stuff left like this LCI forum and maybe a reading group; and of course my research assistantship, for which I can work anytime I want to, I just have to produce good results :-)
The topic I cover in my research assistantship is supposed to be super-interesting a way of organizing information on computers in a humanlike way, with nodes and associations between them. There is as well a connection to former work I did (that software engineering project) as a connection to my minor psychology :-), I'm quite lucky to have gotten this chance. I work together with a professor in computer science whose ideas the project is based on, a professor who is in computer science as well as in psychology and a PhD student (it's his PhD project), so I am playing only a minor part and have really good accompanies.
Wednesday evenings I gonna join an "international teaching assistantship
program" to improve ones skills in teaching and presentation; another chance
to meet new people and learn about different points of view in a study-related
context.
I also joined the Fairview crescent semi-competitive volleyball team, supposed
to be big fun; we have games on sundays, with referees and all this stuff :-)
And then, there was the tragedy in New York, that really overshadowed this
week. I woke up on Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. with the news from my alarm clock and
at first couldn't believe what I heard - like in a bad movie.
When I saw the pictures on TV I began to realize the magnitudes of the catastrophe.
My first class at 9:30 a.m. almost was canceled due to the ongoing events in
the USA. There was a dull ambience on campus - some American guys were really
battered and everyone else was not in a very good mood, either. George Bush
with his pathetical speeches didn't make things better, Emanuel and Mariano
(who has been liveing near N.Y. for the last two years) didn't take him serious
and in fact predicted him to say exactly the things he said, like "The
terrorists were able to shake the foundations of the World Trade Center, but
they failed in their plan to shake the foundations of democracy", blahblah...
I really worry about the war vocabulary that is used these days; let's hope
people act more reasonable than they talk...
This weekend was contributed to studying. The nine courses took a lot of time, so I have to catch up with the three courses I'm taking - and I really have to get used to this reading stuff, every lecture about 15-20 pages shouldn't be a big deal, but I'm not good at reading. I know that's important in studying as well as in reserach, so I should learn it. Well, in cognition and perception I just learned "You are getting better at exactly the thing you are doing", so I will keep on trying...
Although right now I'm not feeling very glad - due to the fact that my writing about the WTC made me somewhat pondering about the consequences - I want to give a really short statement about my time so far and this statement has to be positive, reflecting my dominating mood over here.
I am very glad to have come here. Already, I have made so many experiences, have altered my points of view of so many things and have gotten to know so many interesting and nice people that I'm really convinced this stay will have a major impact on my life - still I'm talking about the first month, but it's different than a month for I know I gonna stay here for a longer time.
I really do like this country; I like the vicinity as well as the people - amenable for foreign people, warm-hearted and helpful are some terms I would use in a bigger picture. You can't generalize, though. For sure, there has also been nasty incidents like the theft of my bagpack, but the positive impressions outweigh this by far.
I'm missing certain things from home, unimportant things like sparkling water (the one's who know me better may know that I used to drink at least one bottle a night) and more important ones like my home, family and friends - although frankly spoken I thought it would be harder. You easily make new friends here, everyone is in the same position and is looking for contacts. Nevertheless it would give me a great pleasure to see some of you guys over here - with a sleeping pad you could stay in my room for one or two weeks, that would be big fun!
To finish this resumé, I want to encourage everyone to make the experience of studying abroad - it's really worth it :-))
So, the big retrospective is over, from now the style will change a bit to shorter hot-spot impressions...
There was a short ceremony, the contribution of UBC to the tragedy in the USA.
Just 15 minutes, but really touching.
Only about 500 auditors there and 4 speakers that essentially pointed out three
major points:
No single speaker mentioned Bush and his babbling about war. And no one mentioned the serious consequences that the recent developments, the instigation of American people by news, shows and documentations could have, neither did anyone mention the harassment of arbitrary people with the "wrong" religion.
But the message was clear: Peace.
aaahrgh, I'm tired...
some other guys wanted to go to a movie yesterday - I wanted to finish my
work on the SE paper yesterday, so I didn't wanna go.
Just one game of pool in the beanery (in Fairview), they gonna leave for the
movie at 9:30 p.m. anyway; nice evening, so they decided to stay and not to
go to the movie - we stayed till 11 p.m., beanery closed. There is no alcohol
in the beanery, but when it closed we went to Koerner's and to the pit pub afterwards
- at 2a.m. the pit also closed, so we went to Verena's place and finally got
home at 4:30a.m.
No paperwork done, but drunk - this evening was really big big fun !
So let's get this work done now - just had a lecture on basics of prolog I easily
could have skipped and slept in instead, damn!
Weekend was fun, after one week of quite bad weather two days of real sun shine, almost no clouds at the sky. Sunday I was playing Beachvolleyball on Spanish Banks with three Canadian guys - funny, all of them work for Microsoft (there are 35 people in Vancouver, big business is in Seattle...).
Got lots of paperwork to do, cause I didn't feel like at the weekend; well, I guess that's ok, weekend and nice weather doesn't match with sitting inside and studying - and in fact, I have done some reading outside, turned out to come off quite well.
I gonna go to the dancing club tonight; it's quite cheap, just $60 for the year, so let's have a look... (for those who don't know: I've been dancing in Germany for some time as well)
I got mail :-) The first one from Germany - from Micha & Katharina ;-)
(I got it despite the wrong address I mailed once :)
On Tuesday, I played Volleyball, "training" for our league matches with the Fairview team. We played with some other guys who were way better than we (super league & co.), but it was fun. Probably, I'm gonna play as an attacker in the middle :-) Our schedule id too bad, 10 games out of which 4 are at this weekend, when I'm at whistler with over 100 other international students ( :-)) ). There are exactly six people left from our team to play all these 4 games, let's see...
This trip to whistler will be big fun, though. We can choose activities between
horse riding, mountain biking, hiking and kanooing / kajaking.
If possible, I gonna try kajaking - weather is suppossed to be not the best,
though. Hope this doesn't trigger bad reminders... :-(
Today, there is the ACM progra
mming contest in the department. They don't allow IBM Visual Age for Java.
I would have liked to do a contest using this software (allowed in the Regional
Contests and the World Finals), but since it's not supported I'll just participate
for fun. I'd like to solve one problem - got about twenty minutes for that,
cause I wanna go dancing again (to a more advanced course); Monday was a little
bit easy (beginner's class :-), it was fun, though.
If I don't finish a problem within 20 minutes (I haven't done any C since the
Regional Contest in Darmstadt last November), I think I'll come back after dancing
and try again; let's see...
I'm anxious how Stefan will be doing - he's trained a lot in the last time and
I want to see him in the World Finals this time; for me, ACM programming was
a real nice intermezzo (and I definitively learned a lot doing it), but not
a thing to take serious anymore (just for myself, I still believe that it's
a real good thing to do!) :-)
I even participated in the ACM contest for an hour, the dancing course started later. Surprisingly, after 6 minutes and 19 seconds I solved the first problem. In this time I went up four storie
s to my office, skimmed over the five problems, decided that the last one is
super-easy and programmed it on a secure shell with vi (!) in C.
It really was the first time I did C for over 10 months, so I didn't even know
exactly, how to parse this stupid input - our self-made reference from last
year helped me there :-)
We had to submit our problems with our user id and I -stupid- accidently submitted it with Stefan's, cause he had made a joke before like: "You could submit it with my number: 15" and I remembered this number rather than mine. So after 6 minutes and 52 seconds there were 2 problems on his account with nobody else having even one. Unfortunately, there were no more problems to add to his solved ones (he also solved the one I did on his own) for he had serious problems with the organization staff - average answering time about 20-30 minutes, two wrong specifications and so on... Stefan says (right now) "The organization staff sucked".
However, after having solved one problem I wanted to solve one with Java ( I knew it was way easier and faster in C, but I wanted to do it in Java) - I was allowed to use IBM Visual Age on my laptop, cause I just participated for fun. I don't know why, but I got a runtime error all the time, some weird problem - maybe also because of the input format, but I didn't mind and went dancing. (By the way, do you know what -3 mod 5 is in Java ( -3 % 5 )? It is -3, not 2 like the mathematical definition - damn...
The advanced (just bronze!) dancing course was really hard. These people have one year of experience and style training in a quite different way of dancing than I'm used to. Think it will make more sense to take the beginner's class and learn a good style rather than learn fancy movements without knowing their basics.
Still have to pack my things for mount whistler this weekend; suppossed to
be big big fun :-)
Had a real good time at Whistler this weekend - met lots of new people :-)
Once more, every third person was German, seems like we gonna conquer this country... ;-)
I knew it.
Never ever go out for a beer with Andy if you don't want to stay all
night - not, if you're as weak as I am. It was a cool evening, though...
However, there is some work that wants to be done, so I'm pretty busy now...
- assignments plus an experiment we have to carry out for my plyschology class
and a midterm approaching next week. So, let's get some work done now!
No entry for quite a while - seems like someone has work to do...
Events in th upcoming week don't sound like great fun: in all my three courses the first assignment is due next week, on Wednesday I have to give a 7 minute presentation about a topic I don't know yet with slides and all this stuff (not hard, but time-consuming). And finally, on Friday there's a midterm in psychology for which I have to read about 80 more pages and repeat the stuff we've covered so far.
Tomorrow is a holiday here :-) Thanksgiving is a nice invention!
That means there is a weekend of three days, oh I desperately wanted to go away
-Victoria or so. After all, though, I decided that this one time I have to stay
at home and do some studies (one main reason for this decision was the weather
forecast - rainy).
Getting up on Saturday and seeing not even one cloud at the sky didn't intensify my motivation to study very much, so I went to Spanish banks by bike in order to play some beach volleyball, let's emphasize that it's October! Well, I didn't end up playing volleyball, but took some photos and, believe it or not, rented a board and went windsurfing !!!
The evening was pretty cool as well, we had a thanksgiving dinner at Fairview, tasty turkey :-)
In the evening we (my flat, Ryan, Jan, Jody and Karolina) went downtown, but
started partying at our place before. Just to relate this to Germany: cause
every pub is forced to close at 2 a.m. people go out really early here...
So we "had to" start directly after dinner at 6:30 p.m. - we were
really in a good mood when we left Fairview and it got better and better - big
time. One of the very occasional events I smoked ... (don't worry, did this
in Germany some times before and definitively won't become a smoker :)
By the way, it was our first flat partying, all of us were there - won't be
the last one :-))
No entry for quite a while - did I write this before?
Three assignments last week, the presentation and a midterm kept me really, really busy. This midterm would have turned out just the same without a minute of studying for it - multiple choice questions of the really easy kind: one correct answer, four choices two of which are dealing with absolutely unrelated stuff...
Fortunately, at least I managed not to do any studying on the weekend at all - I really needed this and so just did it :-))
It was great - amongst others we went to a football game and to an octoberfest on campus. The latter one was really, really funny; musicians dressed up in traditional bavarian costumes... lots of super-cheap beer and a crowd of drunken canadians cheering on Germany... kind'o embarassing that I've never been to the Octoberfest in Munich - everytime something interfered :-(
Well, at least now I've been to an Octoberfest - and it's been a cool one, dancing
to "traditional" "German" music (these guys were really
hard to understand, but they sang German - a pretty strange kind of, though
:) Imagine a canadian yelling "Ans, zwa, gesoffe" and the redoubtable
"ein proushit, ein proushit deour Gemutlickkeit"...
On Sunday there was a rugby team party in the pit and we couldn't let Patrick
go there alone ;-)
Lots of sports this week... On Saturday we've trained for next weekend's longboat
racing ( 10 guys on a boat, trying not to tip but to go as fast as possible
- supposed to be a big party and loads of fun ).
Moreover, my first two volleyball matches on the semi-competitive league - man,
I was so confused about everybody running around, switching positions and stuff...
but I'm getting there :-) The team is actually really good - cool people in
there!
Dancing on Monday, "training" (playing :-) volleyball on Wednesday
and finally two matches of volleyball in the men's superleague. Sounds cool,
eh? Main difference is that they are playing three sets to win... Ok, they are
also a little bit better, or a little bit more... ;-) Well, we lost both
matches, but it was lots of fun - even more running around and lots of good
hits - and at least we won a set.
Reason for me being here in CS is our SE project way back home in Germany -
we maybe gonna claim a patent (!) and need to finish the organizational stuff
for that. Together with Markus, I wrote yet another paper, a nontechnical survey
suited for business people - Markus in Boulder, USA, Andreas in Darmstadt and
me here, all running ICQ, discussing and writing in parallel - pretty cool ;-).
Once we submitted a patent description we are allowed to publish all our stuff
without loosing chances to claim a patent on this afterwards. I'll also put
some papers here I think :-) (By the way - the presentation linked above is
roughly about our topic.)
Stayed up till 4 a.m. - tired now for it's again 2:30 a.m.
P.S. I've got a voicebox now - so whenever you feel like talking to me (and it is after 4pm in Germany) , just grab your phone and call me - if I'm not at home feel free to blabber on the voicebox whatever you want :-) Take your chance and be the first one to leave a message from Germany ;-)
Calls from Germany are just 8.8 Pf / Min using 01024-001-604-221-8875 and in case this doens't work 8.9 Pf / Min using 01086-001-604-221-8875...
I finally managed to go to the Karate club yesterday. It wasn't my style, but
Goju Ryo (?) rather than Shotokan. Still, it was big fun - during the first
hour there was almost no difference at all, but when it came to Kata, I was
very glad about having chosen to wear a white belt - didn't have a clue about
it...
If I press myself sometime, I'll also have a look at the Shotokan club - definitively
won't learn another style from scratch!
Oh man, I'm really back with pretty much everything. Assignments again and
reading as well - this weekend will probably be devoted to studying :-(
Reason for me being back is the project
we've been doing home in Germany - we claimed a patent on Monday (or more precise
submitted a proposal for a patent to keep the rights of claiming a patent after
publication) and wrote a whitepaper to hand business people on the scip conference
that we have a presentation at today in Munich. Really anxious about the experiences
Andreas & Jiri will make there...
Well, this is what I did from Sunday to Tuesday - I went to classes but didn't
get any other work done for university! And it's different here - you immediately
realize when you're back !!!
Saturday was cool, though. We competed in the Longboat racing and had a good good time. I was the runner, who has to jump off the boat, get a cone at the beach and get back into the boat as fast as possible - I was wet all over (but did expect to become, no worries ;-). We were dressed up so cool, wearing flags of our home country (well, actually I wore a Canadian flag, cause our one Canadian team member didn't make it and we lacked a German one) and having flags painted in our face (definitively German this one :). We took some real cool pictures and I hope so much to convince my camera to give them to me - the memory chip causes problems again :-(
This weekend saved me!
On Friday, I was going to make an entry "Not everything is good here -
this damn work sucks so bad" to this journal.
Everything is coming down on us now - assignments, projects, papers, oral exams,
written exams, etc. - there is not lots of time for other things :-(
But as I told - this weekend saved me: Attending the traditional computer science beer tasting at 5pm on Fridays ( which we made last till 1am :) , a fabulous match of Volleyball (in which we played like hell and trashed the other team) and a supercool halloween party yesterday made me come back to life :-))
This morning I had a phone call with my parents - as my mother realized it's easier for me to talk English she told me to do so - kind'a weird: she was talking German and I was talking English ;-) My father even talked English! Still, somehow weird... don't worry, though, I'll be back to talking German fluently after one day in Germany ;-)
BTW: Now it's definite that I'm coming home for Christmas and new year's, booked a flight the other day - so make up some good plans what to do ;-))
Ohhhh, damn loads of work.... But I'm getting there. Just turned in an assignment on Monday (8 pages, LaTeX), an assignment on Tuesday (11 pages, LaTeX) and finished a project proposal which is due tomorrow some minutes ago. If you really want to see what I'm dealing with (which I don't expect to apply for more than maybe 5 people) - this stuff is linked in the study work section. On Friday, an article summary in psychology is due - I haven't even got an idea which article to summarize yet...
Think it's only ok that I have major work to do now... last week was my sports
week - I had 7(!) volleyball games, 4 in the super league and 3 in the semi-competitive.
Just at the weekend there were 5 matches...of which I played three with a severe
hang-over! (And believe it or not - in this condition we won our first super
league match ever, 5 sets, the last one (tie break) 15:13. All this at Sunday
morning, 9 a.m. ...
Man, I didn't remember punch to be that hard ( well, later on I was told that
they somehow lacked juyce, so it almost only consisted out of wine, liquor,
fruits and sugar ). Cool party, though.
Have you guys seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show? They showed it on Halloween at the student theatre. Some people were really dressed up like people in tthe movie and there were no 2 minutes where the audience didn't interact somehow (throwing rice & toast, dancing, yelling "slut" whenever the main actress entered the scene, etc. ;-)) - pretty cool.
Whatever, need to go to bed now - course at 8 a.m. again.
Have a good time !!
One more week... not that the term is over then, but after that the workload's gonna be reduced by far :-)
Well, to be quite honest: I'm REALLY looking forward to this. After three weeks that I entirely spent on campus (studying, plus some parties in Fairview or going to Koerner's) I finally managed to go downtown yesterday. THREE WEEKS - damn, I'm in Vancouver and not in a slave company, forced to study. But as I told, all of this is gonna change next week - more specific on next Friday. There is one final exam on Wednesday, Computational Geometry, right now definitely the most time-cnsuming topic. Then, a presentation for my RA (research assistantship) project team, plus an AI assignment on Thursday, and on Friday an article summary for Psychology is due.
BUT,.... after this, there is at least a week without any due dates :-)) Studying for psychology is over for quite a while - next important date is the final exam on December, 17th. There is a project in Computational Geometry, but that's really interesting and also not due before December, 12th. The final exam in AI is on Dec, 3rd - wanted to read the book anyway cause it's a pretty good one. Moreover, AI 1 is not the most complicated topic... ;-)
From the 4th to the 8th of December, I'll attend a conference here in Vancouver,
called NIPS, Neural Information Processing Systems. Lots of AI and a little
bit of psychology, just my mixture ;-))
Workshops for that will be at Whistler, the big local scying resort - supposed
to be some work and big big fun :-)
Conclusion: another week of hell and finally: some nice & interesting work plus much more partying again :-)) I can't make enough smileys for that - I'm looking SO forward to it !! I see a light at the end of the tunnel - and it's shining brighter and brighter ;-)
Enough about the workload, though. Weekend was fun. Saw two movies in the SUB theatre, Rush Hour 2 and The OTHERS, it's quite a deal there: 2 bucks for a movie and they're showing pretty recent ones quite often. Saw two different trailers for Lord Of The Rings - that's a definite MUST, and I'll still be here at December, 19th, so I can see the original version :-))
Yesterday, we went to a club in Gastown, the Shine - not reallly my kind of
music, but definitely better than going out on campus. Gastown is really expensive,
though - 10 $ cover charge plus 6 bucks for a beer, 9 German marks :.-(
Then, there was a big meteor shower, suppossed to be the biggest one for about
100 years ! So, we stood at the football field at 2am, watching the meteors
coming down... Pretty impressing, just like spotting a meteoroid every ten seconds
:-)
I also learned a cool game yesterday, it's called broomball. Pretty similar
to icehockey, despite the fact that you don't wear scates and you play with
a little ball. Bats are a little different as well, more like a stick getting
bigger at the front end. Also, we played with two balls simultaneously...
It's fun running around the ice and playing all the moves you know from NHL
Hockey :-) Body checks and fights were missing, though ;-)
Should have brought my camera for that... there haven't been many updates in
the picture section recently :-(
At least, I just managed to fix the orientation of some pictures, so you don't
get a wrynecks anymore when viewing it... moreover, there are some nice shots
from Vancouver now which - amittedly - I got from the internet...
Oh, by the way: I guess, I haven't mentioned this so far: I'll be flying home
at December, 22nd (so I guess I'll arrive at the 23rd) and gonna head off again
at January, 2nd. Term already starts at the 3rd here, so there's no way to stay
longer :-(
I'll need some people who are patient with a guy who kind'a lost his native
tongue or even some guys who're talking English ;-) Hope, I won't be completely
lost for weeks again back here...
That's it for now - hope you're having a good time and looking forward to see all of you around Christmas ;-)
Just found a picture of broomball ;-)
As I told - it's fun !
It's done !!! Yeah... - what a good feeling.
Oh man, yes the week was hard and I definitely deserve to have some time off
now.
I guess I'll finally make it to the Aquatic Centre on campus for some relaxing time in the whirlpool or the steamroom. All that stuff is free and I was just too dumb to go there regularly. But it won't stay as relaxed - a social event from all intramural leagues in the evening, maybe some volleyball before. This social event (sounds so weird, doesn't it?) is suppossed to be a big party with silly games and lots of drinking - I guess that fits my mood pretty well today :-)
Tomorrow, there's one more party at the place we've been to in the first weeks.
Remember? I slept less than 4 hours and went for a hike the next day - presumably
still plastered like hell. But Andy did worse; he passed out at 2am and still
got a hangover when I met him at 7pm the next day. So, I'm curious how it's
gonna be like this weekend ;-))
Definitely big fun again! Now we even know quite a lot of guys who will be around
:-)
Tomorrow, moreover, there are playoffs with my Fairview volleyball team - hopefully better than our playoffs in the super league - we really deserved to loose for we just played a bunch of shit.
Oh, here comes a cool picture Andy found in a magazine:
oompapa bands - no comments ;-)
Cheers guys - I'm out for partying again - YEAH !
I didn't write anything about the weekend so far - too busy partying ;-)
Friday: American Thanksgiving Dinner, starting with 7 guys and a good dinner at 5pm and (monotonously increasing :) hosting about 15 people and lots of alcohol at 9pm. We went to the Kits Pub then (not to be confused with the Pit pub, nono, I actually left campus to go to Kitsiliano ;) - nice, nice...
Playoffs on Saturday sucked - we didn't play bad, but lost the first game pretty
close. And that's it - k.o. :-(
Having lost, people insisted on going for a beer and killing the team cash to
forget about the loss - that was at 2:30 pm !!!
After 7 pitchers, I finally left to get ready for the party at this notorious
house - ohoh, I guess except of carneval I was never started drinking so early
...
But I just ran into my roomies and got to know about a dinner at Karolina's
place. So, I joined them which was good to sober out !
When I finally got to the party, some of the guys already did pretty well,
so I adapted nicely ;-)
Plus, once more, I wasn't the most drunk person ;-)
When we left around 3:30am, Eddy had passed out on the couch and I had some
pretty funny conversation with Andy on the way home - dunno what this taxi driver
thought of these drunk people talking German code ( "Da fällt mir
ja gar nix mehr ein - Du hast ja alles Recht der Welt", whatever a drunk
person lying on the back seat meant with this ... and whatever these drunk guys
talked about at all ). It's fun talking German when you're drunk, though. I
guess, I'll talk English at home when I'm drunk...
Sunday was one more day of doing nothing ;-)
Oh, I played soccer with my roomies and some other guys. Funny, after a couple
of minutes in which I didn't do too well (I suck at soccer pretty much), I took
care of the empty goal and turned out to do pretty well as a keeper. Mariano
wanted to kill me for he couldn't score :-)
Rèsume: Nice, nice weekend without one minute of studying - how relaxing :-))
Now, I'm pretty busy again, but with super-interesting stuff now!
Example: Tomorrow, after an AI lecture we have an RA meeting after which I will
attend the reading group which discusses a paper very closely related to our
Harvesta system (my project way home). Then, I'll participate in two Psychology
studies and attend the distinguished lectures series featuring an MIT professor
tomorrow.
Pretty much only stuff I'm looking forward to :-)
Life can be good :-))
am really busy for the next three days STOP computational geometry project due wednesday STOP had my first conference last week STOP big fun STOP and big work STOP and good snowboarding at the weekend STOP and good workshops, too STOP didn't pay anything, volunteered FULL STOP
need to implement some stuff and write a paper STOP had the whole last week for this STOP rather went to the conference STOP good decision :-) STOP need to push it through now, though STOP will write much more after wednesday STOP looking forward to that, got that much to tell STOP need to work now, though... FULL STOP
Yeah right, update on Wednesday, nice plan...
I got an extension for my project till Friday, no big deal, many guys did that. Friday power outage, good excuse not to hand it in... Got it done today at 9pm...started studying for the psyc exam in parallel at 2am at Monday, the exam was at 12 noon... was ok, though...
Was my fault, though. The project was too ambitious plus I worked the first three days on the development of an algorithm I could have expected to be not the best...However, the project is done and in the end I like the paper...
I'm DONE !!!! The last two weeks were soo crazy so much work again... (as I told, kind of my fault). I seldomly had that little sleep in a longer period. About 4-5 hours in an average. Yesterday it were two, today it's gonna be two more, getting up at 5 am to go to Whistler. But it's different now: I don't HAVE to get up but WANT to get up. Actually, most of the things were things I wanted to do in the last weeks, but all study-related. And that's still kind'a different.
It's such a good feeling to know that there is nothing I should be doing right now...
Will go to Whistler one or two days and then write about the conference, Whistler, my project and a lot about partying again - everybody is done now, parties all over the place... probably, I'll start sleeping again, too :-))
Looking forward to see you all around Christmas!
Have a good time :-)
Finally, there is some time for a longer entry ;-)
It's really kind'a weird, I'm always busy here, either with studying or with
fun stuff. Very little time to relax and do nothing...
Last weeks were both, studying and fun stuff together: e.g. this conference.
It was really good to be on my first conference, I definitely learned a lot.
Not to say I learned that much from the lectures, most of them were really hard,
even more since many lectured about very sophisticated ways to work around problems
I didn't even know about, sophisticated modelling and analysis of stuff I hardly
know etc. But people told it's absolutely normal to feel like this on your first
conference. Otherwise it would be boring for all the genious people who are
really into it I guess... and I can be sure that conferences will stay interesting
for me and probably become even much more interesting for me once I know the
basics and start to do my own research... What I basically learned is how such
a conference works. Had a good chance to do that since I volunteered and helped
in organizing. Plus, I learned that the atmosphere is really nice at a conference.
No narrow-minded geeks around, nice! There are also definitely good parties...
And, well, not at last there was Whistler, which is quite a cool place. Getting up at 6:30am without an alarm clock, workshops punctually start at 7:30am, go till 11am, then snowboarding till 3:30pm, workshops again from 4pm to 7pm. Jacusi (whirl pool), dinner, party till 4am, getting up at 6am and the same procedure again. Wow, stressing... didn't go boarding at Sunday, rather slept in. I took some nice pictures of Whistler, but my camera seems to kill the memory chips - AARGH!
Home again, the neglected Computational Geometry paper waited. I spent 3 days
with an approach which was doomed not to work and I was too blind to see it
- never stop learing, though, I hope. Realized this at Wednesday, the due date.
Got an extension till Friday and started another too ambitious approach. However,
finally got it done on Monday evening... after 4 days with very little sleep
and free time - one exception was a party on Friday where I went at 12 midnight
to have a study-break for some hours; good thing, needed it!
Plus, I had the Psyc exam on Monday 12 noon and had to study for it - running
my experiments on the computer, studying in parallel, well, I'm not the best
at multitasking... The exam was damn easy again - for sure except the part about
the one chapter I simply didn't manage to read anymore. Curious how that turned
out...
Went up to Whistler with Karolina and Anne on Tuesday, very convenient to have
a car! Could sleep in there, so I was fit for boarding again and it was big
big fun. Stayed with Andy in a house at Whistler - got a last minute spot on
the couch ;-) Andy is a little bit ahead in boarding, so that was really great
- for both of us! He bought a water- & shock-proof one-time camera and we
took some shots... let's see how they turned out...
I definitely got much better at boarding ;-) Flat passages still suck, though.
Especially when there are 80cm of powder and you're boarding...
Oh, I didn't tell 'bout my board yet: bursting cheap-priced, used beginners
board, with boots and bindings for 250 bucks ;-)
All my buddies stay up there at Whistler for Christmas and New Year's. They
gonna have a burst of a time. So, my time in Germany has to be especially good
to make up for missing that. I have no doubt about that at all, though ;-))
And I'm really looking forward to see you all soon!
Oh, finally I took some more pictures today (with Hendrik's camera, GRR):
Last entry for this term... I gonna fly home tomorrow and arrive at the 23rd about noon. Will stay until Jan, 2nd.
So, what's waiting at home? How are you guys? What's up at New Year's? Who's
coupling with whom?
I 'm bursting with curiosity!
Since Carsten also comes home (at the 22nd), there might be a party at our
place. We thought about Saturday, 29th, but that's not definite at all.
Will keep you posted...
Oh, by the way, both Carsten and me got used to these "bring-your-own-drinks"
parties - they really make sense! People are much more likely to give a party
when they don't have to pay a lot of money on top of the organizational work...
which results in a lot more parties and a good time ;-)
Let's introduce that in Germany, eh?
Hope you're sailing and see you soon :-))