New people and new things
Well I have been working here in Dortmund just over 3 weeks now, it amazes me how fast things are flying by. New people have been arriving and I've been getting new things to do at work here. Sasan and Lauren arrived in Dortmund last week and yesterday another American, Reed showed up and he lives next door to me.
Our group has turned into a nice mix of introverts and extraverts which makes good company. When there were only a few of us, we all shared the same stories of loneliness and boredom as we spent the first couple days disconnected from the community and many miles away from our homes. As we began to hang out, it became our goal to stay out of our respective residences for as long as we could to prolong the contact and communication between people. Now, we proactively greet and welcome the new arrivals showing them around and helping them settle in. It is interesting to see the insecurity of being a stranger in a new country from another perspective, but I'm sure in a couple of days, as they adjust to their new surroundings, they will be okay on their own.
Work has given me a new perspective on MATLAB which I thought I was quite comfortable with. (if you have no interest in CHEE, skip this section) Turns out there are many other functions and shortcuts to learn in addition to significant increases in complexity. I have spent the last couple days, pouring through code going through nested loops and nested functions which are part of process control, trying to understand what is going on (especially difficult since the comments are in German). I am also gaining an understanding of new control techniques that may have been sidenoted in class, but are the thesis and main focus of study of our group with things such as Model Predictive Control and Branch and Bound algorithms as well as Genetic Algorithms. I still feel that everybody in the lab is a genius with programming, but I suspect many of the students here have backgrounds in systems design and programming. Fortunately I only need to gain an understanding of what is going on, as opposed to being able to recreate the procedures. Right now, I am considering using what I have learned in CHEE 418 to design an experiment with a limited number of runs (each run takes a long time) to determine the parameter that affects the system the most and also to try and establish a relationship between speed of the program vs. parameter value. Well that should be enough to satisfy any CHEE's reading this.
My office is a steam room which I share with Abdul from Syria and Neha from India. Abdul is working on his master's thesis and has been showing me the in's and out's of the university (like where to find the best travel ideas) in addition to some excellent Arab music. Neha is on internship from India on a program much like mine. The floor below has excellent circulation. Unfortunately, hot air rises and refuses to leave our space. The vents cannot be opened since our office is in a laboratory so the three of us are suffering silently in our office. We cope by taking quick breaks downstairs to get some fresh air.
From an engineering standpoint, there are lots of interesting structures and statues spread around the university grounds. This things below is one of them, I may start randomly throwing in more photos of these things that I see on campus grounds. There is also a sweet school transport system that connects one campus to the other (think of a monorail between west and main). It is a monorail which looks like a roller coaster that travels to and from student residences as well as south campus and north campus. Every school should have one.
The university here is quite active with concerts and student parties. Yesterday I attended a production of the student orchestra here where they played a tune by Rachmoninov, another song that was led by a Marimba (think giant xylophone) followed by Finlandia and headlined by Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (the main draw for me). It was excellent. Tonight there is a large campus residence party which I may or may not attend. It's been a tiring couple of days and tommorow is the big German-Argentina game which promises a significantly larger party.
On the World Cup side, things are still pretty big, there was a round of 16 match played here (Ghana and Brazil) and there will be another semi-final game being played in Dortmund and it could very well be Brazil again. The crowds are great and have been nothing like the crowd during the Poland-German game where the 5-0 made some 126 arrests and showed up in full riot gear with large police buses as temp prisons.
Also in the city this past couple days, there has been this Cirque de Soleilish thing in the theme of world cup, hence the giant soccer ball and spandex clad acrobats.
Well that's it for now, until next time...
Prague photos
Denise and I in Prague
Powder tower
Esclators go deep into the Prague underground. I feel like I'm falling everytime I took one.
A castle guard, much like the ones in England minus the furry hats. Surprisingly, we learned from the last day bus tour that the government still uses the Castle as a place of business and is one of the oldest state buildings which is still functional.
Day view of the Charles Bridge....all those little white specs are people. It is very busy during the day. If I lived in Prague, I'd hate to have to see all these tourists everyday.
Off on a evening, sunset jazz cruise which was fantastic.
Inside the gorgeous Smetana hall at the metropolitan centre for a concert (can you guess which one? seems like everybody can play Vivaldi, it is like the gold standard)
Sitting on the fortress wall of Vyrslad (butchering the spelling, but oh well). On the other side of me is about a 500 ft. drop off.
McDonalds and I... its been too long!
JANICE??? Randomly bumped into her in Prague. It was nice to see a familiar face so we went out with her and her other friend who's name nobody knew exactly that night.
This the main square. I forgot what it was called though. It is overlooked by a massive statue of a guy on a horse. Behind it is the Narida Museum.
This is an odd sight. The Charles Bridge is usually filled with pedestrians and merchants, but not at 4:30 am.
The Prague Castle that overlooks the city
Tribute to the victims of communism...not quite sure what the symbolism was.
Sunrise on Charles Bridge. Just beautiful, but it was hard to get up for.
Some Christian artwork on the Charles bridge...I think if you touch it, it is good luck so I did.
Some locals sitting on the Vlalstad (or something like that) wall, overlooking the castle just chilling.
Picture of the old Jewish cemetary where many famous Czech Jews are buried.
Prague Photos Part 2
Giant swinging pendalum over the city
Czech WMD???
Space cow
Cool Prague university hangout overlooking the city
Night view of MalaStrana, Charles Bridge, and Prague Castle
Astronomical clock
Bus tour on the last day because we are tired of walking
Statue in the middle of Old Town square
New Kids on the Block
So, been a while, but I was in Prague and it was difficult to get internet access. Apparently it was only possible to get into the internet/hostel room if a) somebody left the door open or b)the cleaning lady was cleaning the room. I promise to upload some of the nicer photos, but you can check out my msn space (on the sidebar link) for a complete set of Prague photos. It is beautiful, but I think 1 whole week is too much...maybe 3 to 4 days.
In the time that I have been gone, there has been 3 new arrivals to Dortmund. Before, there was Laura Grisby from U Tusla in the Chemistry dept., Lynn Sutter from McGill and Cat Lewis from Whitman Uni in the Physics Dept. We have been joined by Sasan from Temple U, Lauren Cassidy from Sage and Kenneth Kamp from U Missouri (who reminds me quite a bit about Mike Hull...the resemblance in personality and appearance are eery).
It seems like everybody here who is doing this program is mostly in their second year of school. I wish I applied earlier and had more chances for exchange. For those of you considering something like this, I highly recommend it. The learning curve is steep and you find yourself learning at a much faster pace than in school. This is partially to the different system they have in Germany. University degrees are not the typically bachelors and masters; they have a diploma program which are said to be equivalent to a masters when students finish. As a result, the dipl. graduates are truly specialists in their field. The dipl. graduates are working on their PhD's and have been doing that for over 4 years on average. They have to teach courses and have more responsibility than our TA's back home at Queen's. The professors are more research focused and to my understanding have a more hands off approach to the students. Talking to some of the other students and grad students here really made me appreciate the support I had at Queen's and the relationships we were able to make with our professors.
For the 2 weeks and change that I have been here, I feel that World Cup has probably changed Dortmund (obviously) in that the town is always bustling (except Sundays). I vaguely remember the few days before the festivities started and feeling that the city was quite busy with a mainstreet full of pedestrians. However, I am assuming that this could change after the championship, but I have been enjoying the atmosphere so far. There are lots of people everywhere celebrating all the time and it is hard to find an empty spot to sit. Also, the sales have been good so far and I am looking forward to collecting WC merch once this is all over.
Well tommorow is another day and probably filled with new things to learn so I am signing off.
Prague
I'm in Prague with Denise in a sketchy hostel. Although I called the place the day before to inform them of a late check in, nobody was there at the door when we showed up after an exhausting 7 hr train ride. Some stranger let us in and warned us about Gypsies who broke in and took stuff a while ago. We'll be okay I think because we have a private room. Borat from Khazistan was right, gypsies are not to be trusted.
Well, we spent the day just taking in as much of Prague as we could. The building are beautiful and I feel like I could just roam around all day. We also searched by and large for a stall that sold smoked chicken leg since I had dropped mine the night before when we got off the train and was pretty bitter about that. Fortunately, after a couple hours of wandering the streets, we found another vendor at the metro station. I took the advice of Shaina and will be checking out some of the more cultured activities around here such as the Vivaldi concert by the Czech orchestra as well as going on a jazz boat cruise dinner. Both combined probably cost ~$60 CDN for the both of us...and this is a splurge.
Well, as everybody is saying, can't really explain how beautiful the place is, so I'll be posting pictures whenever I get back to Germany next week.
Dortmund has officially imploded
Amazing game today (Germany and Poland) which I watched in the Mensa (student caf) with all the other uni students since downtown was ridonkulous with 126 arrests of football hooligans mainly from Poland starting fights and running into things. Police had paddy wagon buses to haul people away and this was even before the game. I may start looking into tickets again because it seems that scalpers are at work here. I also heard from a colleague that he managed to score tickets for the Sweden - Trinidad/Tobago game so that might be in the future.
I have started my work and it is new and completely different that what I expected. My office is in a loft laboratory and it is sweltering in there with zero circulation on the top floor where my desk is. There is much learning to be done as I've found out pretty much everything I have learned is still not enough to understand this project. I sometimes feel in over my head, but I suppose this is expected. Hopefully I will learn something out of this but for now, I'm pretty lost still.
Anyways, tommorow I am off to Hamburg to pick up Denise and then we head to Prague. Photos to come later.
More WC photos
Town square for Germany opener game against Costa Rica (That was about as far as I could go and usually I go pretty far)
Fun police paddy wagon and team
Half meter long bratwurst (folded three times into a toasted baguette) = awesome
Eating ice cream with frozen cream and chocolate dip (soo good)
Random rhino riding
World Cup is INSANE!
Hilarious Swedish fans
Standing up on the light post (its higher than it looks)
Swedish fans in the town square viewing for the Sweden - Trinidad-Tobago game (I'm standing on a light post)
Fellow interns, Lynn, Gill, and Mike
Ferris wheel they set up in town (probably had a nice view, but I'm waaay too cheap to go on it and seriously, its run by gypsies)
swedish fans climbing some statue in the middle of a fountain
I am giving up on writing stuff, just going to post photos with comments unless I'm doing something really interesting.
From an engineering standpoint, there are lots of interesting structures and statues spread around the university grounds. This things below is one of them, I may start randomly throwing in more photos of these things that I see on campus grounds. There is also a sweet school transport system that connects one campus to the other (think of a monorail between west and main). It is a monorail which looks like a roller coaster that travels to and from student residences as well as south campus and north campus. Every school should have one.
This is an odd sight. The Charles Bridge is usually filled with pedestrians and merchants, but not at 4:30 am.
The Prague Castle that overlooks the city
Tribute to the victims of communism...not quite sure what the symbolism was.
Sunrise on Charles Bridge. Just beautiful, but it was hard to get up for.
Some Christian artwork on the Charles bridge...I think if you touch it, it is good luck so I did.
Some locals sitting on the Vlalstad (or something like that) wall, overlooking the castle just chilling.
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