Just another day

National holiday here in Estonia today. Despite that, I went to work in the morning.. only to realize that besides clarifying the proof I had come up with yesterday, there was really nothing to do for me.

The proof, by the way, is for a VERY improbable result - so it is probably wrong. It is short, elegant and I cannot find the mistake, but it is probably there somewhere.

If it is not, I have a pretty good paper, though :) Anyways, Im hoping that either Swen or my supervisor Ahto is willing to check it and either help me find the flaw, or confirm that it seems sound. However, everything else I write into the article kind of depends on which one happens, so I really didn't have anything else to do at work today.

So I went home, went to the store, hung the clothes out to dry.. and then lay on the back porch and read a book for 2 hours.

In the evening, we had a meeting with our Taiji group. Lasted for 3 hours.. and involved a lecture on esoteric stuff like chi circulation. I am somewhat sceptical about that stuff. Not completely though - there is definitely something to meditation, in terms of both immediate and long term health benefits. How much of it can be explained by just paying more attention to what goes on inside the body, however, I do not know. Some stuff seems pretty far fetched.. not all of it though..

I got back at around 9.30.. and then spent 2.5 h preparing dinner. Another indian dish. Pretty good. One word of advice to everyone though - when the recipe sais "2 tablespoons of chili powder" do yourself a favor and put just one. I checked two recipes, both claiming 2 was the right number.. so I went for it. And - god damn. Otherwise, the thing I made was pretty good, though. Just has this very sharp aftertaste. Seriously - god damn.

L. has been out of town for a week. She told me to work while I was away.. and I have. Most of the things that needed doing have been finished. Miss her. She'll be back on Sunday, though, which is quite soon, thankfully.

Meaning of life

This morning, as I was getting coffee for the weekly breakfast meeting, I accidentally saw a paper lying in the printer room.. that seemed to be exactly about the same thing I have been working on for 2 weeks, only they seemed to be doing it better.

The prospect of throwing away my two weeks work did not sit well with me, so I asked whose it was and whether I could borrow it. I could, on the pretense I would write a review for it while I was at it. Which was quite OK by me as I got to write my very first paper review.

Thankfully, they were working in a different model and achieved their results with a lot of precomputation. It was still an interesting and somewhat inspiring read though.

I finished coding for now, having finalised the division protocol just this Sunday. I will take a few days off during the end of this week - Thursday is a holiday and I was told most people take the Friday off too while they are at it.

The indian guy seems quite nice. Has a good sense of humor though. Like publicly telling everyone he is currently trying to install a keylogger to his friends computer because his friend wants to spy on his girlfriend.

Oh yes, and I think I actually feel good again.. there are quite a few hard things ahead but at least I think I have a direction again...

Or something resembling one, anyway :)