I discovered the seventh position

which, on a bass guitar, is very similar to the second position in terms of having all the C major (natural) notes within the reach of four fingers.

So yes, I played bass for most of the morning in case anyone was wondering. I also read up on a few blogs and comics and made lunch, then went out for a walk again.

Today, I walked through the forest-park that is quite nearby, and finally ended up by the sea. The water is still very cold but I can easily imagine going swimming in a month or so.

When I arrived back home, I just crawled into bed and slept for an hour. I think I have a cold. When I woke, I felt quite hungry so I went to the kitchen with a pack of spaghetti and a bottle of ketchup.

Well, the kitchen had suffered from a chinese invasion while I had been away. There were at any given point 6 chinese students preparing food in the rather crowded kitchen corner. Needless to say, Taiji came in quite handy :) The faces kept changing and my final count was around 15.. which means about one quarter of the students on this floor are chinese.. I wouldnt have guessed that, as I had seen only 5 of them previously.

I did manage to cook my spaghetti and two eggs to go with it, though. I sat down with Bilge (the person next door to my room) and a german girl who is doing her PhD in Scientific Theory (which encapsules the philosophy, practice and history of science). She is still looking for a good topic, but after her discussion with Pirjo (the finnish PhD student also doing Computer Science) she was thinking about taking a topic related to CS. As she needed something interdiciplinary, I suggested bioinformatics to her, but that was out for personal reasons. She was considering Human-computer interaction, however, which was what Pirjo is working on. Should work.

In general, it has been one of the most unproductive weekends I have had in a long while. I enjoyed it, and am hopefully ready to get back to work on Monday.

Denmark - Day 3

I woke at 7.30 and went to make myself some coffe, then returned to my room to unpack my belongings (something I didn't feel like doing the night before) and then set off towards the university. On my way to the staircase I met an indian guy who was also about to leave. Of course, I introduced myself to him and asked what he was doing and where he was from. I then mentioned I had been to india just a month ago and that I had stayed in Hyderabad. Well, it turned out that that was exactly where he was from :) We walked all the way to the bus station, but then parted ways as I had decided to walk to the university.

It was a nice 40 minute walk, which meant I arrived at prof. Damgards door at exactly 10, just like I had promised ("I love it when a plan comes together"). He took me down but as the administrative staff had just left, I had to wait for a while to get the keys. I did, however, get to see my new room. His assistant professor had not arrived yet, but he told me to wait til he did and then ask him for advice about the topics.

Most of the day was actually spent on administrative stuff - filling out a form, getting the keys, getting a new sim-card, figuring out where I might be able to get a bike, asking Ivan about where the music stores are in the city, getting lunch and so on. I did have time to read about 30 pages of introduction to rational crypto and also thought a bit about a problem prof. Damgard presented to me about pseudorandom secret sharing.

I left at a quarter past four to check out the music stores in the central Aarhus. There were 3 of them, but sadly none had a small enough bass amplifier. I spent about 15 minutes in the last one though, just trying out one which was nice but still a bit too large. I then walked home, finding one more store, but just as it was closing so I did not have time to look around. I also stopped by a shop to buy a few things I was still missing. I now literally have enough food to last me two weeks easy.

I came home and started cooking dinner. This time it was pasta and I met another set of my neighbours, this time two people form turkey, two from germany, one from italy and one from South Africa. There really are all sorts of people here - from phonetics post-docs to political science bachelors students to everything else in between.

I will spend this evening as I spent it yesterday - playing my bass, reading, perhaps watching a movie. The first few days in a new place can be quite overwhelming so I do not really feel like socializing or doing anything else remotely demanding.

India - Day 19

Today was a rather busy day (by my current standards). At 10.30 I went to Nandita (one of Tom's neighbours, an older woman) only to find out that the driver had not arrived yet (so I managed to hear what was cussing in Hindi judging by the tone used). At about 11 we went shopping with her and Tom's other neighbour, Shiika (the one with the huge library). I managed to get quite a few souvenirs for both myself and some of my friends as well. When in the car, we also had interesting conversations with Nandita about charities and how to keep them going. Her main idea was that one has to always train ones own apprentice, and she cited Jesuites as very famous successful example of being able to keep things running for years on end, from one leader to another.

They left me at a souvenir shop (well.. an art shop, as it also had statues way too large to go in airplane luggage) I was approached by someone asking if I do acid and whether I would like to go to a rave. I declined, in case anyone is interested.

Me and Tom were then invited to Pat for pre-dinner drinks. We went with the scooter. I asked jokingly whether I could drive and he said sure, go ahead. We arrived in one piece, although I did manage to scare Tom considerably by my driving style. We drove past Sandhya on our way and when Tom asked me to pull over and I did, he looked visibly distressed.. and nervous laughter followed, from both of us.

Gabe was also invited, although he arrived a bit late. He had actually phoned me earlier to ask whether I would like to go out with him and a friend of his he had met a week ago. Sadly, that didnt work out because the friend had had a busy day and wanted to rest.

For dinner we went to this rather weird chinese-indian-european place. Portions were big, but prices were similar, being comparable to those found in above-average places in estonia. Tom said he was paying, however. During dinner it turned out that Pat had also had a rather crazy life, having stayed with headhunter tribes in South America and having had to watch a building she was supposed to be in be blown up in a terrorist attack, while being next door and recovering from a hangover.

The drive back on the scooter was similarly distressing to Tom, especially because I took all the turns at considerable speed and the last left turn was quite a close call because of that. When he got off, he said "You really are insane" and Im quite sure he did not mean it as a compliment, although he did admit that in here, being a bit crazy is quite useful for driving. Thankfully, the streets were rather empty today, as I do have to admit I did not plan on cutting things so close (it was actually a byproduct of me not being able to account for the extra weight of another person on the bike).

Also - I am reading Penrose at the moment and I, as a computer scientist with a small amount psychology background, do not agree with his ideas of conciousness, or, rather, think they are completely ludicrous and that he understands nothing of either what computers are capable of or how human mind works.