Thursday, February 23, 2012

I haven't written anything for nearly a month now. Reason, of course, being a very busy start of semester at work. I'm teaching the Graphs course alone this year, and there has also been quite a bit of hassle with getting the Bachelors thesis seminars off to a good start. Also, two Fridays spent touring schools with Kristjan talking about the beauty of mathematics and the charm of computer science.

What is perhaps a bit noteworthy is the fact I actually have vacation next week, in the form of Estonian Winter School in Computer Science. The really amazing thing being that I can actually rest for the most of it, as I do not have any pressing deadlines for the next week.

Well. Almost.

Oh, yes, and I have a girlfriend again, after nearly a year's pause.

Moving on.

Yesterday I was scheduled to talk at Scientific Cabaret - about "Public and secret mathematics", alongside Leo Võhandu, who incidentally was the supervisor for my high school research project. Despite not having seen him for nearly half a year (and then nearly two years before that), we got a pretty good vibe going, and the end result was pretty interesting, both to us and to the listeners.

When going there, I managed to leave my bass guitar onto the Tartu-Tallinn bus. Thankfully I managed to get in touch with the bus company today and they found it still on the bus - so I will have it back.

T. came to listen to the cabaret along with her boyfriend. I hadn't heared from her in quite some time and it was really nice seeing her. We talked for quite a bit of time afterwards, and it turned out that in one sense she was having pretty similar troubles to me, and talking to her helped me quite a few steps forward with respect to them.

On the way from the center of Tallinn to Õismäe where my mother lives, a very hippie-looking young man stood next to me, played air guitar and made funny faces towards two girls sitting opposite him, who quite seemed to enjoy the attention. After making a comment about the girls being an "easy catch", we started talking and had quite an interesting discussion until I had to step off the bus. Random encounters and oh how I like having them every now and then.