Looking back

The past three weeks have probably been the busiest time of my life.

So what have I done?

Graded 40 tests in the Programming course and failed half of my students :(
Gave a talk at institute days and at the open doors day
Managed to inspire two students to keep on going..
Fixed the schedule for Introduction to Informatics.
Wrote up a homework assignment
Took a test and an exam
Finished programming the division protocol for Sharemind
Did its error calculations.
Participated in a 24-hour programming contest.
Attended two conferences on "science and media"
Attended various get-togethers (collegues, family, friends)
Had a Dr. Who marathon with my now ex-roommate.
Dealt a little with the Thing that Shall Not Be Mentioned
Went to 1 Taiji practice each week.
Played Bass (not as much as I would have liked)
Slept.. not too much but still

The first conference was pretty cool. Met a lot of new and interesting people and also got an overview of what the state of Science in the Media currently is and what direction things are moving.

I was pretty much the only one asking questions, initially. After the first session, I asked Aare Baumer why noone else was asking questions. He immediately interpreted it (correctly) as weltschmerz and recommeneded "Sex, Drugs and Rock-n-roll" as the only viable solution. I kind of have to agree. Never mind it was completely out of context and inappropriate. Needless to say, I like the guy even more now that I know he is completely insane. The Dr. House phenomenon, I suppose.

J. Aavik also gave a pretty good talk.. about science wars and how Guilliotine did not actually fall victim to his own invention, but did have to change his name after the revolution. And about Avoiding Boring People, an idea that Watson (as in Watson and Crick) has been popularizing for quite some time. Most of the other talks were also quite good.

After the dinner, a few people stayed behind talking and when the restaurant started closing, headed on to a nearby pub. Two people from Archimedes, two from Uni. of Tartu Research department, a girl who did her PhD in Canada and then me.

Also, met K. on the conference. Would not have expected to see her there. Then again, I hadn't seen her for over 4 months, I think. Then again, both of us have been busy...

Speaking of improbable meet-ups, I have two more recent cases. In the beginning of the semester, I walked into one of my psychology classes and saw a familiar face - one of the students from previous years "Programming 1" course, a math or stat student. However, since you do not expect to meet your statistics student in your psych lecture, I just assumed it was someone who looked like her. However, I ran into her at the second conference two days ago.. and since she was wearing a name-tag, It was pretty clear she in fact was who I thought she was - and indeed, it turned out that she had found statistics too hard so had switched to psychology mid-semester... and did not regret the decision :) And - of course - you do not expect to see your programming tutor in your psych lectures, either, so she had been equally shocked to see me :P

The second one is a bit different. A. called me just yesterday, as we were watching a movie with Riinu and her boyfriend.. I asked her to come over, which she did. Its kind of weird because we had not seen eachother since mid-summer, and it was usually me contacting her, not vice versa.

Looking back on the previous post. I have noticed one very sad tendency - nearly all of the girls whom I find interesting are just as busy or even busier than I am.. so chances of anything developing are.. well, nonexistent. Especially combined with the fact that I will (with very high probability) be leaving Estonia for 1-2 years next autumn.

Life. One day at a time. Ideally.