Gotta go to bed, course starts in 8 1/2 hours ... But I still wanna quickly these pictures of the 7th annual Cocktail Party at Dima's place ;-)
And today, a little bit hung over (what an understatement), 30 minutes after "praying to the porcelain god" [Siamak] I was standing on the court and volleyball finals were on. And guess what, we won the championships !! Hurray :-) Our team was assembled completely at random at the start of the season, but we really picked up on the team-spirit by now :-)
And just in time for the championship celebration, I got a cake from my mom today (however she did this ! :)
Well, now I know why I kind'a felt like updating my journal - it's been almost
two months since the last entry ...
Another reason may be that I'm finally having a little bit more time again -
hurray :-) And that sorting out some files on my laptop I've found tons of pictures
I never posted before ... So, this one's gonna be a big picture session ;-)
Let's start chronologically, and as early as summer 2003 in California - I've got some nice pictures from the air show at Moffett Field (NASA Ames) celebrating 100 years of flight:
Also, there are two videos, one of a rather old-fashioned plane doing a cool roll, and one of a modern jetplane (is it an F16?) close to breaking the wall of sound.
After I was done at Ames, Diana visited me for two weeks and we did a great tour around California. There's a LOT of pictures, from SF, Yosemite National Park over Death Valley and Las Vegas. All pictures can be found in the picture section, and here's but a small sample:
Then, I've found some pictures from the BASF ball Judith invited us to. It was a really nice setting and we all dressed up very nicely (although for some people that caused a little bit of stress ;). Anyways, I don't think anyone other than my laptop has seen these pictures so far...
Sorry Sabine, I didn't take this picture ;-)
Let's see, what else happened in 2003 ? Oh yeah, Christmas - home sweet home :-)
Then, of course, there was the beachparty
in the Element 5 in Darmstadt ;-)
And exhausted as we were from this, New
Year's went by pretty quietly ...
Puh, 2003 done ... and 2004 follows tomorrow ;-)
Organizing pictures just takes soo long - and it's already 1 am again ...
Yeah right, so much for "2004 follows tomorrow" ... or in a week ...
Anyhow, let's get all these pictures out so I can start writing about current stuff again - and lots is happening these days, great party yesterday and we won the volleyball championship today :-)
But first things first, so I'll finish the picture session I started last week...
In February/March 2004, I was at a
language course by the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung)
in La Rochelle, France (Studienstiftung) in La Rochelle, France. Although
studying lots (the sudden switch to French was really hard) we were still out
& about all the rest of the time ... And we just had tons of fun :-)
[I'm skipping the vacation in Turkey with Diana since I lost those pics when my harddisk was formatted in repair - but I'll post them after Christmas when I get them ;) And also some from Vienna where my girl's finishing her thesis right now ...]
Since I was in France during "Fasching", I missed out on that one this year :-( But last month there was Halloween, which - though completely different from German "Fasching" - was WAY cool ! Together with Hendrik, I went to the Halloween Parade in which the "spectators" actually form the parade and there's tons of people on the side, performing something. The parade ended with a great fire spinning and fireworks with music - great stuff :-)
I also got two videos: fire-dance
and fire-spinning.
Oh, and some of the "shrines" were also pretty impressive, especially
this one:
And to finish the past picture session, I got some pics from Vanessa & Andi who visited Cindy & Damir, plus a funny shot of my granddad & Sabine:
So, what's Djanina thinking ? "I wanna be with Mama" or "I am hungry, man" ?
So, that's it, no more pictures to post - that'll have to suffice for a year now ;-)
So, I am finally restarting my journal - I was actually very much in doubt about that ever happening ;-)
I've been here for almost two months, so there's quite a bit to talk about
...
Let's organize this a bit - I partitioned my time here so far into three sections:
arrival and finishing my thesis; visit to Chicago; and after Chicago.
The first episode - Finishing my diploma thesis (September - October 6)
In one word: work !
In three words: work work work !!!
(so naturally, this section is rather boring, I'd recommend skipping it unless you're really interested ;)
Before I came here in early September, I had worked my ass off for at least two months in Darmstadt, so to get my diploma thesis done before moving here. And guess what, I still did not manage to do so (this was mostly due to my misconception of how long things take and the _way_too_large_ scope of my thesis. But there were also another few nasty things that didn't particularly help - such as a server crash in Darmstadt loosing me 5 days of work because my machine had been taken out of the backup for some random reason).
Anyhow, I arrived in Vancouver August 30th, after a long tiring trip. I flew
from Frankfurt via Montreal (I got a free upgrade to business class, nice !!;)
and had to change planes there. Due to my flight arriving late, I had exactly
37 minutes from the time I could leave the first plane until the departure of
the connection flight to Vancouver. In that time, I had to walk about 1 mile
on the airport, get my suitcases, check them in for the connection flight, and
walk another 1/2 mile ...
Well, that shouldn't be too much of a problem I thought, but I forgot that I
was entering Canada and had to go through immigration to get a 4-year student
visa. The guy at immigration first told me to wait because I'd miss my flight
anyways, but then he gave it a shot and dealt with me immediately - so, getting
the visa took less than 5 minutes, and in the end, I ended up in the airplance
with still 10/37 minutes left to go ;-)
So I made it, but apparently the suitcases I had checked in didn't fit into the plane anymore - but they were delivered them the next day, so no worries... The first five days, I actually once more stayed in the good old "Kommune der 23. Straße", the place I've stayed at countless times and enjoyed such good times at. Eric, Hendrik, and Dave (my favourite CS guys from back then) are still living there, plus Dave Pritchard and - as of this term - Eric's brother Tyson. He looks very similar to Eric and is as nice, just younger ;-) (I'll post pictures soon, need to take them first, though ;)
Unfortunately, I could not enjoy the good times I was used to have at the Kommune since I had to continue to work my ass off in order to finish my thesis. It had to be done by end of September for that's the end of the term in Germany and the end I officially proposed for my thesis. I was working most of the time, and only spent 2 evenings with the guys - the other evenings, I just fell asleep at 9pm due to being overworked and jetlagged at the same time. Also unfortunately, I had to miss the complete international and GSS orientations and most of the CS orientation, so I did not meet as many people at once as I could've met having enough time :-( In the BETA lab where I am still working, things were different, though - it's pretty much exactly the same people there as 3 years ago - all PhD students, so getting acustomed did not take me too long ;-))
Anyways, it was a pretty sad first month, especially because the wheather was
really beautiful and I constantly had to be locked in BETA or at home, working
working working. To underscore this: from the time I moved from the Kommune
to Fairview (Sept. 4, the move-in date for student residences), I did not leave
campus until October 2nd when my thesis was de facto done.
Life those days was really not all that nice, one reason for me not writing
back then ... it pretty much consisted of getting up early, working the whole
day with some short breaks to grab food (preferably correcting some print-out
of my thesis) and going to bed late. Effectively, there was little else than
work in my life.
Once in a while some phone call with Diana or mom & dad, or Carsten, but
that was about it for my social activities.
I do not want that to happen ever again for more than a few days ...
So, by end of September, I had a version of my thesis ready that I send out
to my supervisor in Darmstadt via email and that was marked. This was actually
almost the so-far final version which I finished in early October. Actually,
I'm still waiting for feedback on a few chapters, such that I can finalize the
thesis, bind it and send it out.
However, I consider the thesis done, though, and actually haven't even had a
look at it since Oct 6th :-))
If you're interested, it's online at http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hutter/thesis/thesis.pdf
- 172 pages, though ... ;-)
The second episode - North America meeting of the German National Academic Foundation (October 7-10)
As a perfect countermeasure to the bleak & lifeless month before, directly after finishing my thesis I went down to Chicago to meet up with all students in Canada and the US that are currently supported by the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung).
The "official" meeting was from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning,
but I went a day early to see some of Chicago :-)
I actually didn't have to go alone as there are more "Studienstiftler"
at UBC - Carolin (whom I already knew from my language course in France and
who's also at UBC this year), Anne, Susanne, and Siamak (from Darmstadt). Siamak
unfortunately couldn't go to the metting since he's still got an Iranian citizenship
- not the best if you wanna visit the US these days ... Anne & Susanne still
had courses on Thursday, so Carolin and me were left to fly early - at least
we could all share the same flight back to Vancouver Sunday night.
So anyways, here's the highlights:
Thursday night: strolling around, getting confused by local transportation in
Chicago, but finally: super nice Coctail bar with life Jazz - owned by Al Capone
back then in his days ... (suggested by the ever-best "Lonely Planet")
On our way home, we actually met one of the performers in the subway, and he
reffered us to a last-minute ticket-office to see some of the theather-action
going on in Chicago. Guess what we did Sunday afternoon ...
All pics (not only the thumbnails) are at the Chicago
picture page.
Friday: moving from the youth hostel to the hotel, exploring the city.
Here's a (slighlty biased ;) impression from our walking tour, that lead us
to nice and other not-so-nice parts of Chicago ...
Then, official start of the meeting, mingling, checking out the exhibitions in the Field Museum, (supposedly) fancy dinner, open bar, socializing, going to bed early (1:30 am) due to early program next day.
One comment I cannot hold back. So, McKinsey was paying for much of the meeting, and without their financial support it probably wouldn't have happened at all. But I really expected somehing different from McKinsey ... the hotel was nice, but everybody was placed into a double room with two other people, and the two beds were full-size, meaning 1 x 2 meters. In our case, one of the guys volunteered to sleep on the floor, super-lucky for the two of us getting the beds. But man, they can't say they pay for the hotel, and then some people don't have beds to sleep in ...
Saturday: first, workshops. Due to high demand I didn't get into "Why America is loosing the war on terrorism" or "Chance Blindness", so I took "Destruction and conservation of antique national treasures: the example Iraq", not so much out of interest but rather because it was held at Chicago University and their was lunch with it ;-) This turned out to be probably the best workshop of all, it was super-interesting, we saw the University, and got a great mediterranean lunch and German beer from the head of the oriental institue museum, an alumnus of the Studienstiftung ;-)
Then: architectural boat cruise. Way cool !! I'm so not a fan of skyscapers,
but Chicago can offer a lot of very nice ones!
Lots of glass, actually making them look quite nice :-)
Break: up to the John Hancock Observatory with a few guys, second highest skycraper:
Get-together, open bar again, solid food but American beer ... to bed at 4am ...
Sunday: oh, yet another comment I can't hold back. on Sunday, we actually got the bagel that was supposed to be our breakfast - while on Saturday there was just no food at our special breakfast buffet while the regular breakfast in the next room looked delicious - very disconcerting, McKinsey ...
Panel discussion with lots of facts on the presidential election and on what
might change if Kerry wins - not all that much, but it's a start!
End of official program, a few hours left before we have to be on our way to
the airport - so, Carolin and me we went to the last-minute ticket office we
were referred to on Friday, lucked out and 30 minutes afterwards sat in a really
well-done modern version of Antigone. I very much enjoyed this show !!
Some more walking around, and that was it for Chicago - definitely good times :-)
(yes, I got a haircut since)
The third episode - Catching up with stuff (since October 11)
Oh well, and now I'm back to work ... but fortunately I don't need to work like crazy anymore :-)
I haven't been talking about courses so far - basically because they were
not all that central in my first little bit here ;-)
I actually expected to have to take at least one year of courses if not 1 1/2.
There's a breadth requirement you have to cover with your courses and I was
always told by everybody that the courses I took back then at UBC couldn't be
used due to some bureaucratic reason...
Well, I tried and proposed three courses I had taken here back then, four courses
I had taken in Darmstadt and one course I most definitely wanted to take here
anyways. And I lucked out - I'll be taking this one course and that's it - pure
research afterwards :-)
No exam in my student life ever again :-))) (well, at least not unless I decide
to do some more stats courses ... ;)
I'll definitely be sitting in quite a few CS courses next term, just b/c they're
really interesting...
But for now, I only take Graphical models with Kevin Murphy, a new prof. at UBC and a major player in the field of probabilistic AI, the kind of stuff I wanna do for my PhD. And even for my thesis, I read lots of papers by him, so I'm really excited he's here now :-)) I very much hope there'll be opportunities for joint work at some point !
Anyhow, his course is not too little work ... and after being done with my
thesis I had to catch up with about 400 pages of reading ...
Luckily, most of it was stuff I've done before, but this changed as of last
week since we started a new topic I know almost nothing about.
It's all good, though, nobody knows anything about it, so we're all in the same
boat ;-)
So, in summary, all I'm doing here now is super-interesting, but I'm trying
to take it some easier -
and I'll definitely not get back to crazy working mode anytime soon ;-)
So, and by now, I should really be going to bed because the Monday lecture of this course starts in exactly 9 hours ...
Take care ...