Last night I wanted to kill 2 of my 4 other roommates.
One didn't get in until 1pm and had to knock. Another kept tossing and
turning and had brought smelly food into the room and left it there, in
the trash when done. This room is amazingly small. I'll try to open the
blinds and get a few good pix. This thing is the size of a small closet,
has four beds and a bathroom with a shower head that you use by closing
a curtain around yourself (and it's a small bathroom overall). The
space efficiency is amazing.
So, first person got up at 6
am (sun gets up at 4am), and I finally gave up and showered and got out
around 6:40 to check email and then eat. We have a nice breakfast buffet
for 50 kroner (about 10$ USD) -- yogurt, muesli, about 5 kinds of fresh
bread, cheese (with a neat cheese cutter), orange juice, really good
coffee, milk, meat if you want it. Good stuff.
Walked
with a group to the math department a little after 8 am. Checked in and
went to the first talk. I was able to follow most of it and formed a
group of (super powered people) to solve some of the problems
afterwards. We worked for close to 1.5 hrs or 2 and then went to eat at a
place called "Tasty Kitchen". Had an egg salad sandwhich with nice
bread for 28 kroner (a little more than 5 dollars).
The bread here seems uniformly awesome
Went
to the second talk which was awful because he assumed about 10 chapters
of varied math books worth of background. I am going to try to read up a
little tonight to try to catch up, but I don't know how much I'll be
able to catch up. :-/
However, I ran into probably my favorite mathematician outside of my advisor, who this conference was in honor of. I like this guy because he let me take up my time and seemed
to find my questions worth answering. I saw him today. He asked what I was working
on and I told him and it is so nice talking to him because he's the only
person I can talk ``Randy-speak'' (Randy is my advisor) at who understands all of it. So, now I
need to go back and ask him why what some of I said was clear and press
him for some more details that he offered to tell me more of.
Man, I'm totally going to go visit Boston and camp outside his office for a week sometime this year.
Anywho, that totally made my afternoon.
We
asked a local where Danes buy stuff, because I fail to believe anyone
can live solely out of kiosks. My evidence? They don't sell paper and
pens. Or trash bags. Or cookware. So, after some wrangling, I was able
to convey that what I wanted was a supermarket ('grocery store'
wasn't cutting it). We were directed to one, where for just shy of 5 USD
I was able to get TEN razors and a travel-sized shampoo! YAY! (I KNEW
there had to be SOMEplace normal people shopped. I of course failed to
convey that this is what I wanted by asking a Dane "So, where do real
people go to buy real things?" which I thought was perfectly
intelligible.
The UIUC people (me, Dan and Nat) pooled our
resources and had tasty bread, hummus, and fish for dinner for about 5
USD. Good stuff.
AND!
post-supermarket I thought I'd lost my passport and my head started
spinning and I started almost hyperventilating. I tore through my bag
and found my money bag, put it on, and later hypothesized that I'd
become so cheery from the adrenaline.
Posted some pics to flickr, including sculpture of a man peeing. Crazy ness.
Also,
I want a bike. I cannot explain how stuffed to the gills this city is
with bikes. Everywhere! Giant bike lanes! Bike lights! Bikes bikes
bikes! Bikes laid against buildings, unlocked.
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