Hey folks, HAPPY NEW YEAR !
So, after ten relaxing days in Good Old Germany I'm looking forward to another
term at UBC.
Didn't have any New Year resolutions, but it could actually be something like
"Less unnecessary work and stress, concentrate on the stuff I really
want to do!" Which does not necessarily mean to kick the work ;-)
Andy and me will be going to Science World today, suppossed to be a nice hands-on-experience!
Classes start tomorrow for me, got a pretty weird schedule, with Mondays and
Wednesdays totally filled up, one lecture on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Friday
off.
W hich should give me the time to distribute the reading just as I like and
have the weekends off most of the time. Well, that's the plan, let's see ;-)
Oh, I did a major update in the picture
section with lots of unpublished pics from the beginning (and some from
Germany).
Last year's entries are moved to a separate page, it was getting pretty clumsy...
Hope you have a good time!
Today we've been to Science World, Andy, Chris, Verena and me! I guess this thing is more designed for kids, but we had fun anyways...
Andy always had a big mouth, but today it was extreme :-)
Verena could actually go as Rapunzel ...
She really wanted to take Larry with her, I didn't quite share this opinion, although he was kind of cute:
We had some real nice time before the term starts tomorrow (there are more pictures in the picture section).
Since Emanuel had to leave after the first term :-( our flat has a new roommate, Scott from Calgary:
He's in his fourth year of Mechanical Engineering and has been to Hannover
the last four months ;-)
Nice guy, we're really lucky with our roommates :-)
Oh, and he brought a PlayStation II, which will cause Andy to spend much more
time at our place than last term...
I also took the chance to photograph our pizza tower! It's only been growing for the last two weeks of the term, but we'll reach the ceiling eventually ;-)
This is Mariano's sister Amé who's been at out place for dinner.
Didn't quite wanna be photographed ;-)
That's it for now, back to work tomorrow...
Let's see how much free time will be left - courses are too interesting this
term :-( (really, not ironic ! )
What a week :-)
There hasn't been that much work for my courses so far, thus I had to find
more stuff to keep me busy ;-)
Since I'm minoring in psyc I joined the PSA (Psychology Students Association)
which I planned to do the whole last term and never managed to.
Well, another reason is that they have all kinds of nice events : )
Now, I'm co-captain of the psyc corec A volleyball team and captain of the Fairview
corec House volleyball team.
I also joined the PSA guys for snowboarding this weekend. Since one guy had
to drop out, I got a bursting cheap offer for the 2 1/2 day trip to Mount Apex.
Didn't know anybody on the trip before. Do so now, though ;-) 24 of us, really
cool ! We had a burst of a time and I honestly hope I manage to hang around
more with these people during the next months !
Oh, I could kick my ass for being such chaotic: brought my digital camera on
the trip but the memory chip stayed in my laptop in Fairview ;-(
Boarding gets better and better, more and more fun, too. I only had one bad
fall, after an unplanned 5m jump due to a big bump and me going way too fast
:-))
Did some really cool runs through the trees and also did my first black diamonds
:-)
We should definitely consider going to a skying / boarding trip in Germany !!!
Now, I will have a hard time coming back to real life! Classload will get harder this week and I made up my mind to put in some considerable work now - don't wanna have a too hard time at the end of the term.
Hope your week was as good as mine :-)
Oh man, this term's courses are really interesting - I hope not interesting
enough that I don't do anything else :-)
I'm taking a Machine Learning course, a Stochastic Local Search course (both
Topics in AI :) and either AI II or a bioinformatics course (cool stuff :).
I might have three courses with a term paper each! Fortunately, at least one
of them is a paper together with one or two other guys, so not all the work
is a burden only for my poor shoulders. And if we do some really interesting
research & experiments there are chances to submit a paper (in all courses)!
Once more, I've never experienced that in Darmstadt - none of the students I
know there has a publication yet (dunno if I'll get one, though!).
This week was pretty descent. I had my first volleyball games yesterday - Saturday
morning at 9:30 am - iiiihhh ! But it was good fun, the psyc team is actually
pretty good for the league, so I'd say our chances are not too bad :-). Although
we closely lost the second, furious game, we played really good considering
that it was our first day together.
My Fairview team is filling up like hell - whereas in the beginning I wasn't
sure if I get enough people to set up a team, we now have 13 people !!
Oh, there was one special event this week.
On Friday, Andy and me enjoyed a bottle of the very distinguished German (Hessian)
national drink Äppler ! The bottle I was given by Andi (Lang) just before
leaving Germany in August!
Andy realized how German he is (despite his American citizenship) and we were
both bitterly reminded of warm summer days in good old Germany, relaxing in
a beer garden with an ice-cold glass of Äppler.
Another reminder of Germany: it's been snowing yesterday ( which is kind of
special in Vancouver :)
So, let me finish my sentimentality with the view out of my window these days
:)
It's Friday evening and I'm at home - seldom enough ... I'm not gonna stay
here for the whole evening, though.
But it's actually one of the very few Fridays/Saturdays where there is no special
event I definitely have to go to...
My courses are still really interesting, especially after I finally kicked
a course in "complexity of computation" ( which I planned to take
for over a year but which is just not my style ) and took bioinformatics instead.
I've now got a cool mixture: Machine Learning and Stochastic Local Search, techniques
that can perfectly be applied in a field like bioinformatics ( extensive data
but rather inappropriate theories - so, let's just learn better ones :-) - which
means that I won't lack work...
I once asked you guys to send me pictures - whatever you'd like to be published. To prove that I post everything, also really stupid pictures, here is the view out of Micha's window in Greifswald (next to my view, with a little bit more "snow" than before)
Don't you think it looks nicer over here ?
Another reason to visit me !! By the way, Fabe, Frerk, what's up - planning
to come here in April ?? Daniel ? Who else - you're very welcome anytime!
Yeah, Micha, I know, you don't have time to visit a good friend..., pah... ;-)
So, here is Micha's little friend (or is it he himself ? ) and some unidentified lifeform in West Poland (or does that city yet belong to Germany?)
Cheers guys and keep on sending pictures :-)
It's late and I'm tired - but I simply have to post this one before I go to bed:
Now I really do consider this stuff lying everywhere to be snow - even compared
to German standards...
I had a snowball fight from 12:00 am to 1:30 am yesterday - big big fun :-)
Yeah - just decided to go snowboarding tomorrow, great ;-))
We're gonna hit one of the local mountains, Grouse or Cypress most probably. I should be working, but I've just realized that once again I haven't left campus for three weeks. That just doesn't make sense, so I'm gonna change it :-)
It's not that I only study, though... Let's see, what did I do this week?
Monday is traditionally reserved to go to Koerner's for the Mellow Monday. It's just the people that are there on Monday that make it a really good place to be. This monday, Andy and me were the only guys from our gang who managed to go there (all the others missed out due to work, even Eddy who crushed both Mondays before on my couch and apparently liked it :). Andy and me more or less swore not to miss even one Mellow Monday this term - no matter how much work there is to do.
On Tuesdays, my Fairview vball team always has games - this term we kick ass and are currently #1 in the ranklist. The way home from the game was a single big snowball fight after which we had some hot chocolate - no more work which is good :-)
On Wednesdays, we normally "train" vball in the SRC (student recreation centre). It's a drop-in where people from all levels play. This Wednesday, however, pretty much everybody agreed not to go, so I rather kicked Scott's ass in NHL hockey 2002 on his PlayStation II (whereas on Friday he killed me 5:1 and 3:2).
Thursday was fun !! There was an event at the Aquatic Centre, the "Rainfest".
Teams of three guys and three girls were competing in various disciplines like
Kayak Waterpolo, Water Basketball, Ultimate Frisbee in the Water etc. Like the
week before (Winterfest on the icering with Broomball, "Handball",
"Bicycling" etc on the ice.) I played in the team of the Ski &
Board club - and we again had a burst of a time. Oh, btw: we hardly got admitted
to the Winterfest 'cause the Ski&Board club is notorious for showing up
only with drunk people...well, we actually weren't quite sober...
However, we did a pretty good job and ended up with 2 wins, 2 ties and 1 loss
each. And in the case of the Rainfest this meant to be the best participating
club (where the set of participating clubs had cardinality one :), we got T-Shirts
saying "Tournament Champion" and our team picture will be hanging
in the SRC amongst all the other winning teams of all the events this year :-)
Need to take a photo of that !!!
Friday was another night at Koerner's - a pub I'm really gonna miss at home... and today I'm not gonna do anything (after having played vball with my psyc team and having gone for coffee/lunch with the guys). Well, maybe a quick game at the PlayStation... but I wanna be fit and have the time to go boarding tomorrow :-)
Unbelievable - I had three really good weeks and A LOT of fun without leaving campus. This sounds pretty cool but actually is kinda disappointing - I wanna see Canada, not only a nice campus... Spring Break has to be devoted to travelling - well, we might end up snowboarding, too... let's see.
Hope you're all doing just as fine :-)
Hey folks,
it's been a while since my last entry, but "was lange währt wird endlich
gut" ...this is a good one :-)
Quite some things have happened over here!
Let's start chronologically: Snowboarding at Grouse Mountain two weeks ago with
some great powder!
Looks like Andy had fun! 3 meters of snow :-)
After that the batteries in my camera died - didn't like the face ?
Finally, some of you guys are starting to send pictures, though :-)
Micha tries to show us that Greifswald can be a fun place, too... :
Well, I haven't come over one of these famous Greifswald - Pornostar parties yet... maybe I'll manage to go up there sometime when I'm back in Germany, though... (which will be delayed - details below :)
Sabine also send a nice picture which might delight my beloved brother :-)
Nice, eh ? Carsten, hope your leg's getting better ... so you can enjoy Mexico to the fullest !
After the snowboarding there was a busy week of catching up with stuff I didn't ( manage to / want to ) do before - and some more vball games, my Fairview team has 6 out of 6 now !! We got a 3-week break from vball - but played a 3-on-3 tournament last Saturday. Good (!) players and good fun.
But I skipped last Friday. After a Chinese New Year party in CS we (the CS
gang, which over here is not geeky at all :) went to the Ski & Board beer
garden and the Psychology beer garden after that. The psych beer garden was
much more relaxed than the one from Ski & Board, but it was a really good
decision to go on cause I met a wonderful girl there, Melissa. She's Vancouverite,
studying nursing in her third year and she's just great :-)) Started dating
each other on Saturday... :-)
And even more luck on top of that... :
There's a Summer Student Research Program at NASA and one of the mentors asked
Nando and Holger (two profs in CS who are about Andy's age !) about interested
students. Nando forwarded the mail to his whole course, and with some luck and
Holger's recommendation I got it !!! I never would've expected this - 10 weeks
in the summer in Silicon Valley, doing research about Tracking and Diagnosis
in an autonomous Mars rover which is planned to go up in 2009.
If you wanna know more about the program: http://www.riacs.edu/ssrp/
Oh boy - life is great !
Hope you're having a good time, too ! Ohh, carneval, I see ... :-))
Missing to share my happiness with you guys !!!
Forgot one nice thing to tell: over here, there is a week off in every Spring
term - this week !
Officially, it's called "Reading break" - inofficially: "Boarding week" :-)
Looks like I'll be going to Vancouver Island with Mel and two friends of her for Wednesday and Thursday. Finally, I'll get there ;-)
Just got a picture from Daniel - party in Munich ...
Don't they look nice and harmless? Well - dunno the other two guys, but maybe they have a good influence on the Dorf-Erbacher ;-)
Hey - I'm still alive !
Remember I told about "Reading break / Boarding week" in the last
entry ?
All my profs somehow thought people have a lot of time to work in the break
and I actually ended up working more than usual this week :-( All the nice things
like Koerner's and volleyball were cancelled in reading break, so my profs were
right, I had more time to work.
Luckily, at least I managed to go over to Victora with Mel for two days :-))
She's working part-time in a hotel here in Vancouver, so she got really good
deals and we stayed at nice hotels :-)
Unfortunately, the weather was not the best, but we didn't really care ...
Mel (right) and Minna crushing in the ferry ...
Although they got enough sleep there, they still didn't want to join me for some cultural experience in Victoria's museums. Kind of understandable, considering the fact that they already knew the places ... if you're really interested, there are a lot of stupid museum pictures :-)
The rest of the time we basically had a good time - going out on Friday and hanging out in the hotel on Saturday:
And then, my batteries died again ( being 2 days old - ARGH ) ...
This is how a package of cookies looks like if you left your window open and a hungry squirrel came along:
Since then, not a lot of things have happened ...
I'm working my ass off, four allnighters within two weeks - not healthy in the
long run. I'd put all my course work online, but am too lazy now.
Within one week, I handed in 45 pages of assignments, progess reports and paper
reviews, all written in 10pts in LaTeX...
Good thing Mel has lots of work as well, so she doesn't get pissed off when
I have to work.
My projects are really cool and interesting... wanna switch back to normal workload,
though ! Or less :-)
I still dunno when exactly the NASA internship will be. 10 weeks sometime in
between May and September... - don't really care, though :-)
Hopefully, I get a good time of travelling and vacation before ...
Damn - work work work.
But only one more week - going to Mexico with mom, dad and Carsten next Saturday
:-)
Which means I'm working my ass off to get everything done until then...
It's about 31 degrees over there - as opposed to the 0 degree here :-) We have
snow - in March !!!!
Two big projects due on Friday, a lecture to hold in the Stochastic Local Search class and three more assignments will keep me more than busy ! But to be quite honest, I don't really mind the work because what we're doing is just so cool ! Both of my projects are dealing with (and hopefully improving on) the state of the art. It looks like we at least get a publication for the bioinformatics project :-)
Today we had playoffs in volleyball. After having won 12 out of 12 games in the regular season we all expected quite a big finish - but apparently this was not meant to happen. I see a pattern evolving - just as last year we played way worse than before and lost the first game - k.o. :-(
Otherwise, life is good ! I still don't know when I'll be at NASA, but presumably
starting in early July or so - summer in San Francisco :-)))
Tonight, I'll be going to the psyc grad banquet - although not in psyc I know
quite some people there by now (vball, Apex, etc. :)
And on Monday, we definitely will party on the last Mellow monday for the term (and thus the LAST for us [maybe] ever). Firas will be buying drinks for he missed out on two Mondays - no more mercy ! And finally, Mel will also make it :-))
By the way: if you think about coming over sometime - I'm starting to make plans what to do in May and June... thinking about buying a super-cheap and crappy van (if I can find one) and driving around in Canada and maybe even down to San Francisco !! If I remember correctly, there is also a birthday coming up on which it would be soooo cool to have some of you guys around! It's unlikely for me to come home before NASA...
Happy Easter !!
I'm really sorry not to be able to write individual easter greetings !
But I'm in a hurry - tomorrow I have to be at the airport at 6am to catch my
flight to Mexico where I'll meet my beloved family :-))
And I have been working like crazy until today - one more reason to ENJOY the week in Mexico - which I will do.
Best wishes from Canada !
Sis is not tuu gudd - didnt reit for olmoust e mans...
Next wik everiesing will bie bedder - toerm ouver, paepers sabmitted etc.
Gosh, I'm braindread - will really enjoy having a couple of weeks off starting next week. Will write a lot then and start taking pictures again :-)
YYYYYYYEEEEEEHAAAAA
I'm DONE ! Submitted the last paper yesterday night, and that's it for me with deadlines :-))
Don't have any obligations whatsoever for the next 4 weeks!
Well, I should go down to San Francisco until June 3rd when my internship starts,
but I do not see that as an obligation :-)
My plans for this time ? Hmmm .... enjoy life !
See all the spots in Vancouver I've missed so far, relax in the sun that's beginning
to shine more frequently :-)
Buy a car and drive around a bit. Wanna go to the island, Tafino possibly, maybe
also Banff or Jasper in the rockies. But not
too much ... no more stress for me :-)
And finally do a road trip down to San Francisco. Too bad I'm going there alone,
but I'm sure I'll meet people very quickly.
Along with me, there are about 20 more students doing the internship at NASA.
I'm gonna stay at the appartment of one of them, so there is no way not to meet
people :-))
If you wanna know what I did for the last month (s?) have a look at my research
section in the next couple of days - I'm gonna restructure it majorly and put
all the cool stuff there I did. Indeed, it was cool stuff - otherwise I hadn't
put so much work into it.
But guess what: it's soooo good to be done ;-))
Won't be home for my birthday :-( so please have a drink on me !
I guess I'll celebrate it here in Vancouver with a couple of friends - Andy
leaves at the 15th, so we'll have to party into it...
I'm hoping for a big Welcome back party in September when both Carsten and me
are back - he'll fly August 31th, I'm done with my internship August 30th but
think I won't rush home. I'm flying from Vancouver anyways, so there's another
roadtrip ;-)
I'm a bit concerned about arriving home with the summer gone and the pool season
over.
But I guess that's what's gonna be happening - switch from summer in California
to winter in Germany...
maybe I should go to Australia in the winter and come back to Germany for the
summer :-) ... just kidding.
But I wanna go to Australia eventually, met so many cool people from there !!
Still hope to see some of you over here (or in San Francisco) !!!
Have a great time !
Thinking of you,
a happy Frank ;-)
Started putting pictures from Mexico up. Only have five so far, though... Tell Carsten to send more (and tell my quota to let him :)
I've been soo lazy since Saturday - didn't do anything ! Great feeling :-)
Oh, waved through over 600 emails in my inbox... sorry for not answering some
of you so long...
Gonna go boarding tomorrow :-)) Finally again! Might be the last time for this
season, so I gotta enjoy it !
Yesterday was one of the most gorgeous days I've seen here so far... and we
were up on the mountain boarding ;-))
After these crazy times of working I felt like in heaven ... it was FUN!
Great weather, didn't wear goggles nor a cap for the whole day and the jacket
also spend a good portion of the day in my backpack :-)
Hendrik had his camera with him ... pictures to be posted soon. Meanwhile, it's totally worth to check out his webpage - these are the guys I'm hanging out with quite a bit (I'm not on most of the pictures for the simple reason that I was locked working in the beta lab for months ... )
Just to give you an impression of what you're missing if not checking out his page :-)
And finally, Carsten and me managed to get the pics from Mexico over here...
Great vacation !
Vacation !! Sunshine, around 25 degrees, beach, beach volleyball and absolutely
no work !!!
That's been my last days :-)
Still looking for a car, but I'm way too lazy now...
One reason that I'm not writing too much :-)
Instead, here are some shots from the Whistler day (all made with Hendrik's
digital and mainly by him):
Even if you're not into skying or boarding these panoramas might tell a story...
Same day, morning, afternoon and late afternoon after an hour of Sepultura... (Andy and me; Andy, Hendrik, Mona and me; some unidentified criminal...)
And the house of Dave, Eddy, Hendrik and Eric (who is posing during the renovation
on the right :)
Andy, Verena and are also staying there, me occasionally ...
Andy and Humprey, the tree.
That's it for now... heading off for downtown :-))
Damn - just realized that I missed updating my contact information...
I moved out of Fairview on May 1st and will be staying at the house of Dave,
Eddy, Eric and Hendrik for the next little bit. It's about 15-20 minutes by
bike from UBC and the atmosphere there is really great !!
From May 15st to May 19th, Mel's manager is away for a conference; she's got
a cute cat who means everything to her, so she asked Mel and me to stay at her
place for catsitting ! That's gonna be really nice :-)
I'm missing my cat anyways and finally after me working like crazy until recently
and her being sick the last couple of days we have some time for us :-)
If anywhere you are likely to reach me at the (first mentioned :) house under
(+1) 604-267-0730 or in the beta-lab (+1)604-822-4599.
My most reliable and lasting email address is mail@fhutter.de
- this will also work when I'm in the US.
Just got my visum and it's only good from June 1st to September 1st - hopefully
I can extend it a bit at both ends... I planned on going down there around the
24th...
let's see what happens ...
First of all, my thanks to all the dear friends who send greetings to my birthday
:-))
I'm gonna send out personal emails very soon - as soon as everything gets a
bit less crazy here ...
Too bad that I'm not in the greatest mood right now - I'll miss writing about
a kick-ass week, gorgeous sunshine and me enjoying life.
And about my plans to visit Carsten in Yale that just got screwed up yesterday.
Why ? The @#%&* US consulate rejected my working visa application b/c they
need Washington to decide individually on every person that will work close
to the field of robotics - according to them in these times this is a sensible
field where extra caution is necessary. I can understand this. However, I already
provided all my personal information to NASA and expected to have a really easy
visa application, having the papers I got from NASA. But no, they will send
it to Washington - and whereas NASA always took less than a day to send and
respond to stuff, Washington will take in between two and six weeks !!! Weeks
in which I will have to stay outside the US !
The exchange program is there to "promote the general interest of internation and cultural exchange" - which does not seem to be the main objective of the US consulate ... I was seriously pissed off !!! And I have no idea what will happen now ...
The worst possible case is that I don't work for NASA, but hopefully there will be a way ...
Finally restructured my homepage. Take a look at the mainpage ...
NASA is coming along ok - my mentor Richard and the project facilitator Sue send a letter to the US consulate describing my work and the conditions under which I work. That should hopfully make it easier for Washington to judge about the case and speed up the process. Nothing under two weeks, though ...
I'm going to New York tomorrow to visit Carsten !!! I'm at least not strictly forbidden to enter the US with a pending visa application and since I have a flight back six days later and New York is quite far away from San Francisco they should be cool with letting me in.
Hopefully. It's up to the officer at the border, wish me luck !
Dunno if I can post updates from New Haven...
Yale was nice - especially seeing my dear brother. Where he lives, works, parties
:-))
No problem with entering the US whatsoever - it just seem to be the people at
the consulate. On the other hand, they're just doing their job ...
I GOT MY VISA TODAY :-)))
Will be leaving for San Francisco on Saturday, being only a week late, which
only means two weeks vacation in between instead of three weeks. YES !
I've been slacking for a month now - actually looking forward to working again
:-)
Took tons of photos these days - panoramas from the Entire state building and so on ... need to stitch them together, though ... will try to do this soon and post them ASAP :-)
I am sitting in the plane.
The plane that will take me down to the states again.
But this time is different.
I am leaving Canada. And I will only come back for a week on the final way back
to my own country in September.
I am sad. I am leaving a great country, a great city, great people, great friends.
This is the time to say "Thank you". Thank you to everyone who made
these ten months become the unique experience they were. I will not forget you.
Sorry that I can't find the right happy words now - you would deserve them !
Saying goodbye was hard.
Goodbye everone. Bye house. Bye Humphrey. Bye Canada.
Very hard. Bye Mel.