Ruminations

Ta da!

2005-09-18T23:50:32Z

I have left Norway. For the moment.

I did not sleep on my last night. I barely made it.

I am in London. It is classy.

I saw Big Ben. We communed with each other as to the nature of being a Ben.

I had some fish and chips. They were delicious.

I am in a hostel. In the "internet cafe".

The end. For the moment.

Winding down

2005-09-12T00:33:41Z

And in world-record fashion, I am back for another update!

Pics

First off, a few more pictures from the Day o' Galdhøpiggen.

The drive up. Some nice mountains and... Look! Little white mountain creatures!

Can you make out the words? It says "Det er livsfarleg å krysse breen utan førar og tau. Kontakt Juvasshytta om føring på breen." (and also "Crossing the glacier without a guide and ropes is hazardous. For guides across the glacier, contact Juvasshytta." and various others). Notice how cheerful you are when you fall in a crevasse and are held up by a rope!

They really do look like colorful little penguins. I think the guy in front is waddling!

It was sort of cool when messages had to pass along the line. Once in a while there'd be a "Stopp!" from the back, which, if it traveled slower than people walked, resulted in everyone suddenly finding themselves turned and held taut by the rope.

It's hard to tell, but it falls away on the sides. I like this shot.

When you've got to go, you've got to go. ("Stopp!")

A ways to the top. That's a line of people on the ridge in the middle-left.

There's a peek of blue in the distance, but mostly we just know snow, wind, and clouds.

Back down in the valley, it's a different world.

There we have it. Pics, the second. And that brings me now to this penultimate state of having under a week left in Norway. I can't believe it! I mean, I can, I'm quite familiar with the passage of time, but... oh you know.

So time for some random reports. My experience this summer has been an interesting blend, several dimensions of novelty rolled into a singularity. There's the fact that I've graduated. I have officially departed (for the time, at least) from the hallowed halls of academia and have entered the hallowed halls of "back when"s and "real life". Then there's the fact that I'm working full time. This goes hand in hand with having graduated, but the difference in schedule and atmosphere is indeed significant. And it's of a slightly different flavor than the fulltime, but on-campus research the past couple summers. Next there's the fact that I'm living by myself. I have grown very used to my life being anchored around other people, from my living quarters to dining to my extracurricular activities. Suddenly, I am entirely responsible for only myself, and deciding things like when to go shopping or what to do when I get home from work are up to and affect only me. And finally, there's the most obvious fact that I am in northern Norway, land of the funny solar behavior, where they speak (get this) an entirely different language. All of these factors have combined to put me in the slightest state of confusion, like I'm never quite sure what I'm experiencing. I am along for the ride, enjoying it quite a bit, but it is nonetheless a ride in a strange vehicle, I'm wearing different sized shoes, and looking out colored windows to observe unfamiliar sights. In some ways, that makes it a lot harder to center myself, but in some ways, that's the point of the trip.

Language

Back to concrete terms. Such as cement, pebbles, and thermal expansion coefficient? No. I've continued to pick up bits and pieces of Norwegian, but do wish that I'd been able to speak it before coming here. Is there any way that was even remotely conceivable? Not a chance. But still, I think it would have added a lot to my experience. To be sure, most everyone here speaks very good English. It's really unfair. I feel a bit like I'm cheating and getting off easy because, let's face it, I am. Norwegians start learning English in 3rd or 4th grade (I think), and so it's a valid assumption that store clerks, neighbors, and people I meet will be able to switch over to English easily, obviating the need to know Norwegian. But life is more than meeting needs.

Initially I had a borrowed library book for learning Norwegian. It was interesting because it was entirely in Norwegian (no descriptions or explanations in English or another language), so my primary way of learning was through reasoning about the context from pictures, conversation structure, etc and by occasionally finding words in my very small English to Norwegian dictionary. The dictionary was at the back of the phrasebook I'd brought, but the words were only ordered in English, so to figure out a word I'd have to make a guess as to what it meant, look it up, and see if I was right. The process was significantly helped when I could look words up online if I was around a computer (oh yeah! That's another major novelty of this experience: not having a computer at home), but it sufficed. On a random note, the book also had a cd, and while most little snippets were short conversations like this, I was totally surprised by this unexpected jewel (educational use only, yada yada yada). So catchy! Can you figure out what they're about? Coming soon to the next Harmonics album...

In any case, I have learned a lot of words, and I am sometimes able to read fairly well, but speaking is very very slow and listening usually too difficult in everyday situations. I have managed to carry on a couple conversations, though, which was totally exciting. And a bit ago, we were playing Trivial Pursuit (with Norwegian questions), and after reading a question and pronouncing the second word of the song title "Unforgettable Fire" like the Norwegian word for "four" (despite the italics, I was in the Norwegian mindset), I was proud to be told that I'd exhibited a symptom of young Norwegians when they are just learning English. Woohoo! Actually, another random note about that game: I was entirely amused by the question that was basically "What is an inning in baseball?" It's sort of an awkward question in any case, but no one knew it. Not that I'm familiar with the terminology of cricket or Gaelic football...

One more observation in regards to language. Given that I don't speak Norwegian and that pretty much everyone here speaks English, it's interesting to note, and I'm obviously quite aware of, when people choose to speak English around me. It's a spectrum. Some people will only speak English if they're talking directly to me. I've heard others who say they consider it common courtesy to speak English when you're in a group of people and not everyone speaks English. My favorite people are those who speak English around me but also try speaking Norwegian to test me and help me learn. I'm really not sure how much on their part is a conscious decision or how much is unconcious. I'm no psychologist, but I think that on some level, people's "language behavior" reflects how much they are aware of and interested in what I am experiencing. And being the selfish human being that I am, I am drawn to people who are aware of and interested in me much more than if it seems they are not. Like I said, I think I'm extraordinarily lucky that everyone I've met can speak English at all, but because of that, it makes me aware of this other aspect of my interactions. The whole thing is something that I had never really thought about before, and I didn't even become aware of how my own perceptions were being shaped until I'd been here for quite a while. Of course, this all makes me wonder whether there are subconscious things I do when I'm interacting with people that affect people in the same way...

Readin', 'Ritin', and Death Metal

I am not a man used to having tons of free time. My years in school have been chock full, which was great, but I am not used to coming home in the evening and not having anything that I really have to do. It's so weird! I've felt busier of late, but early on I really enjoyed the free-floating feeling of walking home whenever, taking a while to fix and clean up dinner, reading, going on walks, working on my Norwegian, going downtown, whatever I felt like. Oh, and don't ask me how time seemed to go by too fast while I simultaneously had free time. It's one of the mysteries of modern science.

One of the most notable and exciting activities for me has been reading for fun, which, embarrassingly, I pretty much never did during the school year, or at least not for a loooong while. But since coming, I've read Angels and Demons (Dan Brown; fun predecessor to the not-at-all-trendy Da Vinci Code), Seabiscuit (Laura Hillenbrand; surprisingly engaging, made into that movie with Spiderman), Brave New World (Aldous Huxley; the classic dystopia), Switch Bitch (Roald Dahl; a collection of four scandalous and hilarious short stories), Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov; uncomfortable, controversial, but very well written), My Uncle Oswald (Roald Dahl; kind of like a novel version of one of his short stories), The Roald Dahl Omnibus (um, Roald Dahl; a collection of short stories, three from Switch Bitch plus 25 others), Foundation and Foundation and Earth (Isaac Asimov; the "first" two books of the Foundation series). Currently working on Second Foundation. Tada! Okay, now I have no excuse for not doing anything I could have been doing otherwise, but still, it's been grand. All except for My Uncle Oswald were recommendations at some point or another. I have definitely rediscovered Roald Dahl as one of my favorite authors. He was my favorite when I was little, with Matilda, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, and others, but up till now I'd only read his children's books. I just love his sense of humor, the creativity of his stories, the twists of his tales. So good!

Inspired by all of the short stories, I really want to write some in the not-too-distant future. I think it'll be a nice counter-balance to daily feeding my soul bits and bytes. For the moment, I didn't have a lot of paper and felt like limiting myself to fewer words, so wrote a couple grandiose poems, as of yet, untitled. Hopefully they will continue too?

Lastly, I threw in "Death Metal" above cause it goes so naturally with the first two Rs, but I did just go see a concert by the classic Norwegian band Turbonegro. I won't scandalize this journal by quoting any of their songs here, but suffice it to say that it certainly was an interesting experience. Preeetty far from my musical tastes, but yes... interesting.

And now, I conclude this mega-post to go catch some not-quite-the-end-of-the-alphabet proverbial z's...

Mountain Weekend

2005-09-07T23:28:25Z

Ohhhh, I don't know how it happens. I don't know how time goes by so quickly. I haven't posted in a gajillion years, but that's because I've been crazy! I mean busy! So finally, here's an update... And also, I went back and made all my in-page pictures smaller to spare your bandwidth a bit, but you can (should be able to) click on the pictures to see the larger version.

So, what have I been doing? Well, mostly stuff around Tromsø. However, not last weekend but the one before, 24 robbers came knocking at my door. Of course, by 24 I mean 26. And by robbers I mean other IAESTE people and I. And by came knocking at my door I mean went on an extremely fun weekend called "Mountain Weekend". Woohoo! In short, this included a day of rafting/"canyoning", a day of hiking to the top of Galdhøpiggen, the tallest mountain in Norway, and a day of caving, or if you prefer, spelunking.

It was definitely the most eXtreme stuff I have done, especially in such a closely packed jumble. Going from a day of water activites to a day in the snow to a day in wet dark caves... it was a crazy combination. So, let's see. I guess I'll start with the first day. No, scratch that, I'll start with the -2 day. I woke up on Tuesday with a really sore throat, a sure sign of an impending cold. Curses!, said I. What a time to get a cold! Because of the location of the place we were going, and because of the pecularities of the airlines, it was cheapest to fly down to Oslo and then turn around and drive ~5 hours back north to get there, and my journey was to begin Wednesday night. I drank water by the ~~gallon~~ ~~liter~~ litre, tried to get a good night's sleep, and thought happy, healthy thoughts (picture a cheerful little carrot). On Wednesday, sniffling and blowing my nose, I made it to the airport with my co-traveler Sofie.

Thursday - Oslo to Skjåk

In Oslo, we stayed with a friend from Arctic Week, who kindly offered up his floor. On the comfort scale it was a wee bit like a slab of concrete, but it was better than the rain. Indeed, it had been and continued to pour. On Thursday, we walked a little bit around Oslo, including a rerun of Vigeland Park, but it was so wet everywhere that it wasn't much fun. We were also anxiously checking the weather forecast for the weekend, and to our dismay, it was scheduled to be rainy through most of Norway, including where we'd be. At this point, I was not having great premonitions about the weekend, as I was sick (still blowing my nose constantly... yup, I know you wanted to know!) and going to be spending the next few days wet, cold, and dirty. And what with the flight, renting a car, and the weekend cost itself, it wasn't going to be cheap, so I was hoping it was worth it.

In any case, late Thursday afternoon we started driving up to Skjåk. We had two cars, one rented and one owned, and nine people going from Oslo. I slept a good deal in the car. We also listened to the radio, which included a lot of American music. I think that the people on the radio speak Norwegian clearer than most people do when they're conversing, though I still don't know enough to understand. After a long, rainy drive, we made it! Had a bit of food and went to bed early, though it was really fun to see some people from Arctic Week again too.

Friday - Water

We woke up to pretty clear skies, and counted our lucky stars. And I wasn't feeling as icky as the previous day, so I counted them some more. We got decked out with full wetsuits, helmets, borrowed tennis shoes (at least I did, I had only brought my hiking boots) and a paddle each, and were then given instruction in the ways of the white water rafting. Contrary to what conceptions you or I may or may not have, rafting is not a sissy sport where you sit in a cozy boat resembling the floor of a bouncy house and drift idly down a stream. Oh no. It is an intense, involved, eXtreme sport where you sit in a cozy boat resembling the floor of a bouncy house and then battle like mad to dominate the river. There were five or six of us in each boat, with a guide in the back who'd be giving commands. We learned how to instaneously respond like the cogs of a well-oiled rafting machine when we heard the commands "All Forward", "All Back", "Left Back", "Right Back", "Stop", or "All In". "All In" was of course a signal to grab the rope on the side of the raft (they called it the "oh shit rope") and lean in, so as not to fall out if we were about to hit a rock or something. Typically, however, one sits as high up on the side as possible so as to get better paddling leverage and to make it easier to fall out (actually, by jamming your legs into the middle/sides of the raft, you can get pretty good stability, but it seems like you're about to fall out). We also practiced what to do if you fall out of the raft, how to pull someone back in the raft, and heard what to do if the raft flips.

We went through some easier patches and through a couple bigger rapids. Paddling is apparently important for keeping you moving and stable through them, so going through the rapids was quite tiring and exhilerating! And you get pretty wet, too. It was also slightly more exciting due to the recent rains having swelled the river. One raft flipped (I was glad it wasn't mine), and it took a while to pick up the survivors.

After going through the second main section, we stopped on the banks and walked back up to The Hole. This is a huge rapid that is close to the bank, and which, by walking out on this rock, you can jump into and be carried underneath to the eddy on the other side. Now, I've mentioned this before, but I am cold-blooded when it comes to water. I usually consider pools in California to be really cold. But here I was, in Norway, standing on the bank of a river that probably thought it was still snow, and I voluntarily cast myself into it like a madman. Amazingly, I survived.

We stashed the rafts, walked a bit to the bank of a stream, and had a delicious lunch of hot soup, fresh rolls, and hot sweet cider juice stuff. Satisfying! Then we began the second half of the water adventure, which was canyoning. Had I heard that verb before? Not sure. Anyway, we were basically travelling down a ravine (small canyon I guess?) by way of the stream running through it. It consisted mostly of wading, walking, climbing, and swimming, with the occasional jump or slide into a pool. Nothing too much else to say about it, but it too was wet, cold, and exhilerating. It ended with an optional jump off a small cliff, which I wasn't going to do at first, but then said "aw, heck", and did.

The day was capped off by showers at some facilities nearby and then all-you-can-eat pizza. Yay! Both showers and pizza were lukewarm, but they did the trick. I ate a lot of pizza.

Saturday - Ice

So, there aren't really any pictures of the first day since it was so eXtreme. Can't get those cameras wet! Some staff guy actually did take some video footage, and I should be getting a copy, so maybe someday if you're lucky you can see it. And unfortunately, my batteries were out anyway, so I don't have any of my own photos of the latter two days. But below are some photos taken by someone else, and I might be able to get some more later.

We woke up early (7 something) on Saturday, this time to turn our eyes upward, ever upward toward the mountains. Galdhøpiggen clocks in at 2469m above sea level, which actually doesn't seem that high, but hey, it's a local maximum. We sort of cheated by driving up most of the ways to the ski lodge (~1900m?), where there was in fact skiing! We set off, along with a huge group of other people (probably a couple hundred?). It soon thinned out into a rarified line as groups tend to do when walking together. It started off rocky.

We eventually got to the glacier, and at that point we had to rope ourselves in so that if someone fell in a crevasse, the weight of the others would hold them up. Yowza!

I'm in the middle in the back in the green jacket and brown pants. It's me, I swear!

Starting off across the glacier!

For something as awesome-sounding as a glacier, it was a pretty simple flat trek. We jumped over a very small hole that went way down, but other than that it was straight-forward. It, and the whole hike really, had a very simple beauty. Not a lot of colors or sights, but the simple contrast of the rocks and the snow, dark vs. light, jagged patterns vs. blank canvases, was stunning in itself.

And finally, we made it to the top!

There's me on the right, eating a sandwich, with a scarf thing around me head. We couldn't see much from the top, so we sat and had a snack/lunch break. I was bundled up in a billion layers (5), and ended up being really warm for the whole way up, but once we stopped moving it got pretty freezing.

The way back down was a lot faster. Climbing over icy rocks is harder going down, but going down snow is way easier. That's it for Saturday! Oh, except I also splurged on a hot shower that night at our campground. It was 10 kroner for 5 minutes, and getting two of those was oh so worth it.

Sunday - Earth

Our final day was to go exploring through some caves. It rained a bit, but we'd been extraordinarily lucky with the weather so we couldn't complain. This time we had the helmets from rafting, but with little lights strapped to them.

Down we go! Wet rock = very slippery. For the record, hands, good shoes, and a good light are your friends.

We had to crawl through a lot of tight spaces! Not an experience for the claustrophobic.

More small spaces.

The camera flash belies how dark the caves actually are. If you weren't pointing your head directly at something, you probably couldn't see it. It was an interesting exercise in quickly building a mental model of a space from a quick scan, and then navigating with that in your head while scanning further in front of you. My light battery was on its last dregs when we entered the second cave, but I got a new one and then it was glorious.

The second cave was called something along the lines of "Fear the River", and had a swift water channel flowing through it. You could hear it all around, which was pretty cool. There was also a really hard passageway in the cave that involved crossing along a near vertical wall with few footholds right above the water. You could lean across to the other wall (over the water) for support, but it was pretty freaky, especially because the rock was really wet. I was near the back, and we waited a looong while for people to cross. I think someone along the way messed up what path we were supposed to take, cause I heard that some people in front went along a lower path and it was easier, but oh well.

People waiting (lights off to save batteries) for others to get across. A couple places in the cave had these cool little water droplets along the walls and ceiling that sparkled in the headlights.

On the way hiking out (once out of the caves), I got some water from the stream which the guides had recommended earlier. It was the cleanest water I've ever seen from a stream, and it was refreshing and delicious indeed.

Ladies and gents, that's it. We departed ways directly from where we'd parked and I headed back to Oslo. Stayed there one more night, and flew out early Monday morning to get to work at lunch time. Success! Especially after all my doubts, the weekend turned out to be most excellent. I still had a bit of a cough when it was over, but I'd felt surprisingly good, the weather had been surprisingly friendly, and it had been the perfect combination of activities. I was proud and glad to have done a lot of stuff I don't usually do, and like I said, it was fun to have a mini Arctic Week reunion.

I guess this post ended up just being the Mountain Weekend Special Report, but so be it. Nå må jeg spise og sove! Og kanskje lese? Vi snakkes!

Cinematic

2005-08-16T17:30:15Z

A quickie for those who are bored, curious, and have lots of bandwidth. My next-door neighbor and fellow IAESTE trainee (semantic clarification: one person) got creative with people's photos from Arctic Week and made a movie out of them (warning: it's 55 megs).

But now I must run off to shop, shower, and shave (and eat), before heading out to shelebrate the two IAESTE trainees who are done with their work here and are soon leaving! And half of them have a birthday today. Ha det...

Torsdag = Thor's day = Thursday

2005-08-11T20:40:22Z

And we’s back in the game. Hyggelig å se dere. Or something like that. So what in the world have I been up to? Well, you know, the normal Tromsø life. So what in the world does that entail? Well, glad you asked.

Actually, if you’ll kindly juggle that thought, your breath, and your horses for just a wee moment, I should first finish the play-by-play from my way long ago batch of pictures. Here we go…

Firstly, when I was staying for the night in Oslo I met a guy in the lobby of the hostel who also happened to be from the US. And lo and behold, he was also a computer science student and he had recently graduated from Berkeley. John was just beginning a 6-week bike tour of Norway, and he was going to be passing through Tromsø that weekend, so we made plans to connect up. Aside from seeing the midnight sun and lounging about, our main adventure was a trip up to the top of a nearby mountain via the Fjellheisen (of future Arctic Week fame).

Trek across the bridge toward the mainland. You can see the little cabin at the top of the mountain.

It goes up ~400m in elevation with no midway supports! After getting butted out of line by a swarm of German tourists, we eventually made it onto one of the cars.

They warn naughty children that misbehavers are eaten by the boogey man who rides the tops of the cable cars, but in actuality, there’s no boogey man.

It’s a German tourist.

The city in a bit of its glory.

We decided to get away from the crowds by hiking to the top, which looked deceptively close.

After a long while, we made it to the wind-flag-pointy thing!

What we’d thought was the top was, in fact, not, so we ventured onward toward more false tops. We got to two more, the latter of which was somewhat toplike and had another huge pile of rocks, so we felt accomplished and wound our way back. If you dare, you can check out the fairly unsuccessful attempt at a panorama. It’s interesting from the perspective of learning how automatic camera exposure and the photo-stitching software work, but not ultimately satisfying. Not as cool as this.

The whole thing took several hours, and when we got back to the lodge we were starving. It was then that I had my first dash of reindeer. Delicious! We blitzed through dinner, donned our gear, and danced all the way home. Ha! Okay, actually we took our time, enjoyed the view, and eventually braved the long walk back.

So that’s it. Now, at long last, have we come to the end of all the unusual happenings and goings-on that have interspersed my days. What’s left? To a large extent, mostly just three things: working, eating, and sleeping. I’ll add a fuller post later about all these, but in short… Work’s been a lot of fun. I learned a splendid new programming language, we get free lunch, I have internet access to do crazy things like posting these entries, and most importantly, it’s enjoyable and interesting work. Eating is necessary to stay alive, but it also sometimes tastes real good. Sleeping is something wholly foreign to me, but it, too, can be delightful. I will merely throw out some figures such as… 24 hours / 2 days * 2 weekends in a row. Rock. On.

In other news, I am taking reading suggestion donations. Please contribute! Preferably books that can be found here.

Okay, the end. For now.

Arctic Week

2005-08-02T00:22:58Z

Now we’re getting to the good stuff! I’ve been back for a while now, but it takes a while to recover from a fantabulous trip filled with lots of fun and not too much sleep, so I have an excuse. Arctic Week is an annual trip organized by IAESTE, (mostly) for participants working throughout Norway. It went from Saturday July 16^th until Sunday July 24^th and was, in short, absolutely awesome!

There are five interns here in Tromsø, and four of us went on the trip, along with 23 others from all over. I really really enjoyed getting to know the people on the trip, who hailed from the following countries: Norway (our two guides), United States (2), Ireland (5), Austria (2), Poland (2), Malta, Brazil, Bosnia, China (2), Canada, Sudan, Oman, Turkey, Thailand, Belgium, and The Netherlands (3). Quite a mix! We mostly spoke English (the only language everyone knew), but conversations would occasionally break out in German, Polish, French, Arabic, or Dutch. Interestingly, people probably had the hardest time understanding some of the Irish.

Here’s a general map of our route:

Started out in Tromsø, ended up in Bodø, and hit up the gorgeous Lofoten islands for most of the middle. And now it’s time for a breakdown…

I’ll spare you the duplicated pics, but again, you can follow along at http://www.stanford.edu/~bdangelo/arcticweek/ for all the gruesome details.

Saturday – Tromsø

We met up on Saturday as people rolled in from the airport. I joined them in the late afternoon, though in retrospect it probably would have been nice to be one of the first ones there so’s I could learn names and get to know them one at a time. In the evening we took the Fjellheisen (mountain elevator) up the mountain. Had a delicious dinner (we were starving) of reindeer stew and mashed potatoes. Apparently wasn’t a very traditional Norwegian meal, and some people found it really spicy, but it hit the spot. There was one vegetarian on the trip, so we made her eat Rudolph. Full to the brim, we hiked up to what appeared to be the top of the mountain, passing some patches of snow on the way. It was a couple guys’ first time in snow! That necessitated a snowball fight, of course. After a bit of admiring the view at the top, we headed back down and walked into town. Negotiated a couple pubs (though at >$8 for a glass of beer one is encouraged to simply enjoy the music and atmosphere), and it was most people’s first time seeing it so light out in the middle of the night. It was fun seeing everyone’s reactions, having become pretty familiar with it myself. Massive throngs of people cruised the (carless) street, and what a few of us intended to be a quick stop at a kebab stand for ei pølse ended up taking near on 45 minutes thanks to limited workers and a disorganized line. Tasted all the better, though.

We were staying for the night in the gym of an elementary school. There was tons of gymnastic equipment everywhere, so we all slept on the pads and dreamt of the horse, floor exercises, and rings. Actually, someone was snoring and it was really bright cause there were no curtains, so it was more like we tossed fitfully on the pads and wished we could stay asleep long enough to hit some REM cycles.

Sunday – Tromsø

Visited the Polaria museum, featuring a handful of fish, exhibits about the arctic, and some snazzy bearded seals. And also this really cool whirlpool generator that reminded me how much I love the flow of liquids. I wish I knew more about fluid dynamics. Did some lounging about, playing football (soccer) in the schoolyard. Had a BBQ over on Telegrafbukta, a beautiful park area right on the water, with these one-time use BBQ trays that seem to be all the rage here. We played some cards, tossed the Frisbee around a bit, and I taught a group of people how to play ultimate. It was semi-successful on the small and uneven grass, but lots of fun. I even had time to catch a shower back in my own room before we all boarded the midnight Hurtigruten ferry to begin a ~16 hour boat ride. For me, the trip now felt like it was beginning! We hung about for a while, explored the decks, and eventually decided to try to get a bit of sleep on the floor of the eensy-weensy conference room they’d set aside for us. I think ‘cozy’ is the word I’m looking for. Yes. Cozy.

Monday – Ferry to Svolvær/Kabelvåg

I was sleeping right next to the table where they laid out breakfast, so I only had to reach out to snag a piece of bread. And on my other side was the water cooler, so I could reach out to get a plastic cup of water. Nothing like breakfast in bed on a boat… After some brød with jam/chocolate, we mostly kicked it on the boat all day. The boat made a couple stops (people ventured ashore to get some stuff from the store), but mostly it was smooth sailing through the beautiful fjords of Norway. Pictures just don’t capture it. ‘It’ is pretty much uncapturable by anything but being here and experiencing it for yourself. What’s especially amazing I think is not just the huge steep mountains, but their direct contrast, nay, juxtaposition, with the water. If we were out hiking and saw them it would be one thing, but in scattered island form they are even more eye-catching. If you are a mountain person, hie thee to Norway!

We docked in Svolvær around 16:30 and took a bus to the hostel in Kabelvåg that would become our home for three nights. I bonded with the other people making dinner by stepping up for dishes duty, and in the night we went on a short exploratory hike past a graveyard and up to some rock that was important in WWII. People were interested in hiking to try to see the midnight sun (even though it was bright in Tromsø, people hadn’t actually seen the sun itself at midnight), but decided to push that to the next day.

Tuesday – Kabelvåg

In the morning, a handful of people (if you can fit eleven people in your hand) decided to venture on a quest for the midnight sun. Everyone else would probably be renting bikes/kayaks, and having a whale-meat BBQ in the evening. It was reeeally tempting to go on the hike, but I was weighed by the following facts:

it would take most of the day to hike there, and we wouldn’t start back until after midnight.
I’d seen the midnight sun and secretly knew that… shhh… nothing very different happens at midnight… shh…. ok
biking/kayaking seemed like a lot of fun
a whale of a BBQ sounded culinarily intriguing

So that was that. Those of us who were sticking around scoped out the rental situation and decided to go with bikes, which were actually in pretty good condition. Off to explore the neighboring town or a beach, whichever came first. Now, I’m used to biking around campus a lot, but biking amidst majestic fjords is way cooler. It was slightly hilly, but they came in pairs so weren’t too much work. But every time you look up, it’s just… wow. To demonstrate the multiplicative effect that traveling in groups has on intelligence, we decided to bike through this long dark tunnel (we were on a road, and the road went through, and there was no other way to get to the other side…). As you well know, it’s all fun and games until someone gets attacked by bats in a tunnel and grows up to be an awesome crimefighter. Or until there’s an accident. Luckily, we managed to convince some lady in a car to drive behind us so that cars speeding through wouldn’t blindly run into us. She was nice enough to do her part, but several cars instead sped around her. And let me tell you, cars passing (either way) sounded like jets taking off when amplified by the tunnel (which my more musical side found interesting and my more pragmatic side found disturbing). In any case, we made it through safely and agreed not to travel in such a large group on the way back.

We found a beach, wherein a rocking good time was had by all. I waded up to my thighs in the water, and some people went all the way in. To my senses, it felt freezing, like nearly every natural body of water I have ever been in, but in actuality it probably was the same as the Pacific in Northern California (which is three millionths of a degree above freezing). Played a ton of catch with the frisbee on the open sand, and it felt soo good to be able to run and jump. We played for a long while, but stopped after one member (not I!) made a graceful throw that soared, soared, arced, curved, curved, descended, dropped directly into a baby carriage behind a group of people. Keep in mind that the beach was nearly empty except for way off on this one side… We tried not to have heart attacks as I approached, and thankfully, thankfully, the baby was cooing and giggling on the sand a little ways away with the people. One of the adults in the group turned her head and said something sort of laughingly as I fetched the Frisbee, and I apologized and stepped lightly as I made my way back to our towels, where we took up the safer activity of staring at seaweed.

Dinner was delicious. Norway is somewhat infamous for their staunch stance when it comes to whaling, which is to ignore the environmentalists in the rest of the world (sound familiar?). There are yearly quotas and strict regulations, but it’s still a pretty controversial topic. While I might feel bad ordering whale every day of the week, I figured one meal wouldn’t cause anyone to… should I say it?… dare I?... ok… blubber. I’m sorry. That was a really bad pun. I should take it back. I’m sorry… Right, anyway, it tasted very good, mostly of whatever marinade it had, and had a noticeably different texture from beef (more consistent and less stringy, kind of like those processed steak patties you can get in the dining hall, but less scary). This meal brought my strange-animal consumption count up to its height of 2 for the trip.

One of the guys I got to know best on the trip was Kevin. Like me, he is a physics student from Ireland, sings (and plays) bass in a band, beatboxes, is a fan of good music, and is generally pretty weird (I may not have one or two of these traits). But we had a lot of fun together, and after dinner we finally managed to conquer The Rock (it was harder to get someone up there than it looks!).

Wednesday – Kabelvåg/Svolvær

Wednesday was fishing day. After some miscommunication, the group missed the boat in the morning, so we walked a bit around Svolvær and had a delicious pizza lunch while waiting for an afternoon boat. The boat took us around for a little while, including back to the awesome Trollfjord (we’d been in and out on the Hurtigruten), where the boat could go right up to the side and we could fill up cups with water off the rock face. Slightly brown, but refreshing.

The first place we tried to stop to fish, there was very little action. I think the fisherman caught 5 fish on one line in the time the rest of us caught 1 fish on about 20 lines, but we decided to keep moving. Same thing happened at the next place we went. I guess when this happens they let out all the stops, because he then took us right adjacent to these fishery nets. Well, I don’t know what they were, but there were fish jumping inside, and I think other fish from the sea think there’s something cool going on so they come to check it out. We let out our lines (near but not inside the nets) and the fish starting biting like mad. It was a strange mix of “oh yay we’re catching all these fish” and “oh gross there’s fish blood and guts everywhere”. Good to experience for a day, but no way would I want to be a fisherman.

In the evening, several of us cleaned the fish, purging ourselves of any desire to ever eat anything resembling a fish again. But when they were BBQed up, they didn’t smell so bad and we were famished, so we gave in. It had also come out several days ago that my birthday was approaching. At the stroke of midnight, people sang me Happy Birthday, and many of the girls even demonstrated their countries’ excellent tradition of giving one, two, or three kisses on the cheek. I could get used to this cultural exchange thing…

Thursday – Bus to Å

Much of the early portion of my birthday was spent sleeping on the bus. I won’t go into detail on this part (there were more gorgeous mountains yada yada yada). But we eventually came to a real live… Viking museum! There was a portion that had exhibits like a normal museum, but the coolest parts were a couple rooms (more like halls) made to look authentic, filled with all the tools, decorations, looms, plants, animal skins, and weapons that Viking money could buy or that Viking warriors could pillage. And even better, we got an authentic Viking stew lunch served right out of a huge cauldron in the middle of the room. It was surprisingly flavorful and filling, alongside some sort of tasty bread and some extraordinarily sweet mead, a kind of wine made from honey.

The rest of the day was pretty low-key. We made it to Å (that’s the entire name of the town; recall: basically pronounced “oh”). We settled into the house that is legally owned by humans but sonically owned by seagulls. Their nests were literally right outside the windows. Most people would be sleeping there, but I myself shared a room just across the pier above the café. Several of us went to play some pick-up football at a small field with a couple local kids. Came back to a light pasta salad dinner, went on a delightful stroll… and that capped off the day.

Friday – Å

People split up again today. Some who’d previously gone hiking rented bikes. A bunch of us others rented a couple motor boats and cruised around looking for the Maelstrom and/or Hell. Actually, we intentionally avoided going anywhere near the Maelstrom, which is one of the world’s strongest tidal currents, and we didn’t make it to the small town called Hell on the tip of the islands. But we coulda.

In the evening, we had another BBQ (more pølser!) and I taught a few people the basics of pass juggling. We then geared up for one last final attempt to see the midnight sun, a ~7 hour hike to and from a 400 something meter mountain. This definitely ended up being one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. The path we took to get around the lake was muddy, rocky, and at times treacherous. I am amazed that everyone actually made it over this one ravine. We made it to the other side of the lake to a small beach, where one person decided to go in the water. We then began the condensed uphill portion that took us to the ridge. Up up up, quite the calf workout, until finally… we reached the ridge and got a glimpse of the huge basin, lake, and sun on the other side. It was surreal. Especially after the climb, especially being in the center of a huge wind channel, and when we got to the top I started laughing. The view gave new meaning to “breath-taking”. The wind was bitter cold, and strong enough that just holding a bottle at an angle would make it whistle.

After lugging water, chocolate, and various salted snacks up a mountain, it felt great to sit back and have a snack. Unfortunately the sun went behind another mountain, so people still didn’t get to see the official midnight sun, but I don’t think anyone minded too much. On the way back, at one point I was walking by myself across this marshy area and started getting harassed by a seagull. I didn’t know where the nest was but was concentrating on not falling in the mud, and it kept swinging around, dive-bombing and screeching at me. To prevent things from reaching a Hitchcock level I turned around and went the long way around the marsh, but all in all it was a sort of cute, protective-parent experience. The rest of the way back (along a less treacherous route) was filled with excellent conversation and lovely company, and with it still light out I wouldn’t have minded an even longer walk.

Once back, a bunch of us sat around into the wee hours. For some reason we were completely giddy from the hike and found everything absolutely hilarious. A perfect nachtspiel.

Saturday – Bus to Bodø

Rolled out of bed just in time to make it to the bus, as it was time to catch the ferry to Bodø. Grabbed a hamburger from a café at the dock for breakfast and boarded the boat. It was a shorter and less exciting trip than the Hurtigruten, but we were all still so tired that it was nice to just sit around, talk, and nap. We relaxed briefly at the cabins in Bodø, kicked around the football, then headed out to a restaurant. More pizza, the universal crowd-pleaser, mmm mmm. Then wandered around until we found a pub, and we happened to be the only ones there for a little while. People were being reluctant to get up and dance, but after I jumped up and demonstrated that dancing is not only for cool people, a crowd soon followed. I tried a couple times through the night doing swing and salsa with people, but it’s just not the same without a partner who knows what you know. Nonetheless, throwing in a lot of ballroom, hip hop, emulations of David Elsewhere, and random moving to the music is a heck of a lot of fun. We stayed up way too late, but it being the last night, not late enough.

Sunday – Flight home

Woke up when I’d been intending to leave for the airport. Despite helter-skelter confusion, I crammed my stuff together, said quick goodbyes, and taxied to the airport. Even had time to sit around and twiddle my thumbs a bit before boarding my run-of-the-mill, one-stop flight back to Tromsø.

So, ladies and gents, that was my week. Hopefully you got a small taste of just how much fun it was. Really, the pictures are like dirt compared to the real thing. I’d love to do the whole trip over again, but will probably stick with trying to go forward in time, creating new memories and maybe trying to meet up with some of the people from the trip.

If you stuck with me to the end, congrats. You get a sticker of a puppy.

Tromsø...

2005-07-30T19:40:32Z

…has been my home sweet home for the last month and two days. To start, let’s go over the pronunciation, or at least as best as I understand it. ‘o’ is pronounced like in English ‘to’ when long, but like in English ‘oh’ when short (when followed by two consonants). ‘ø’ is pronounced like the ‘u’ in English ‘pull’, but with your lips a little more puckered and your tongue almost adding an ‘r’ at the end of the vowel. So that makes it: Tromsø. Got it? For reference, å is pronounced like ‘o’ in ‘oh’, and æ like ‘a’ in ‘hat’. Simple!

Tromsø is mostly on an island, which you can see here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=69.664723,18.962402&spn=0.165029,0.648399&t=k
See the little lake toward the bottom middle? The little white spot next to it is where I live. Exciting!

So let me take you on a tour from my room to downtown. It’s about a 15 minute walk, mostly downhill. We start with a nice path alongside this meadow thing:

which heads out to the road:

As you can see, the bus stop is really close, which is handy for getting to work faster in the morning in case it’s raining or you’ve decided to get an extra 15 minutes of sleep (which I would never do). It’s not quite as cool as the Marguerite without the realtime online bus map, and it’s pretty darn expensive (~$2), but it’s a nice bus system all around the island and my bus card has served me well.

I then take a road through a beautiful cemetery:

The majority of the times I walk by, I see people visiting/tending graves, walking through, or sitting on benches. It’s very nice. Might be a little more unsettling in the dark of winter though.

Tromsø is surrounded by beautiful mountains, most of which are still snowcapped. The road opens up a bit to get a glimpse:

Continuing downhill, you can see the bridge across to the mainland and the church across the way, which are two of Tromsø’s symbols. And some pretty flowers. Yay.

Almost there…

On the right of the blue building you can see the top of the intersecting-hyperboloid-spaceship-shaped building being renovated into the library. That’s real close to where I work.

And we’ve reached downtown, the Sentrum:

A portion of the main road, Storgata, is closed off to cars and is usually a-bustling with people. There are a lot of shops, little stands selling kebabs or pølser (hot dogs), and yes, even the northernmost one of these:

I got a combo-meal because… it had to be done. It was delicious because I was hungry, but not much special, and it put me out a little over $10. Have I said already how expensive Norway is? It is.

And here’s the final stop of the tour.

On your right you’ll see the bridge and church again, the harpoon guy statue, and a bunch of touristy stands. Oh, and a couple seagulls. I don’t think I’ve mentioned them yet, but they deserve a mention. Actually, they deserve more than that, but I’m trying to keep this entry polite.

You see, the birds here have discovered a remarkable ability to make really loud, piercing squawks. And even better, they’ve discovered that they have this ability at all times of the day! So cool! I think much in the same way that I might say something like “hey check out this cool percussion noise I just figured out” and then do it all across campus, some bird was once trying to make percussion noises, accidentally made a loud annoying squawk, and decided to tell all his friends. Um, not that this is karma or anything. In any case, the seagulls seem to be very smart, very interested in keeping you away from their young, and very hungry for any food you are eating, have eaten, or are imagining someday eating. They are very well trained. My residence is across the street from the aforementioned lake, which is home to many a beakéd beast:

Okay, they’re not that bad, but they add a little spice to the Tromsø life, so to speak.

And speaking of the lake, here are a few pics from a late-night stroll around it:

These are from around 11:15-45 pm. Gotta love that midnight sun! And with that, I’m off to take a break.

Life is short and so is this post

2005-07-28T00:06:54Z

Amaaaazing Arctic Week last week. I absolutely loved it. I don't have time now to update (I know, I know!), but here to satiate the masses are my photos from the trip: http://www.stanford.edu/~bdangelo/arcticweek/ (click on the folders on the left). Older and wiser, I'm off to sleep. And it's actually pretty dark outside! Cause it's raining, but still...

Oslo, Day 2

2005-07-15T23:36:42Z

I allowed myself to sleep in a little the next morning, but the room's curtains were sparse and the windows thin, so the sun and garbage trucks respectively stepped on my plans. Nonetheless, I had the afternoon to make the most of Oslo. I walked through downtown, which is nicely organized around Karl Johans Gate, a central street connecting the train station and Royal Palace:

View toward the train station from the middle of street.

View toward the Royal Palace from the same spot.

This guy was infamous for repeatedly confusing the Norwegian word for "bird" with the Norwegian word for "hat". Like, every time.

A classical University of Oslo building. Saw some Edvard Munch murals inside.

Dandelion fountain! It was nearby here that I stood for ~10 minutes filling up my water bottle (from a drinking fountain, not that pictured). The stream was really high and scattered, so it was very difficult to catch drops. I got some funny looks, but oh that water tasted sweet. It was only as I was walking away that I realized I coulda shoulda used one of the fresh ziploc bags in my backpack to catch the water. Anyway...

The Royal Palace itself, being trampled by a huge green man and his horse (don't worry, it was only an optical illusion). The flag is flying, which supposedly means that the king is home, but I didn't see him so he might very well be an optical illusion, too. (Coincidentally, the royalty are just figureheads, and the government is run by the parliament and prime minister.)

A view back down the street from the Royal Palace. I'd like to point out the huge seashell-shaped sign (that's a tongue twister) sporting the Freia logo, which is the company that according to Mr. Steves makes "Norway's oldest and best chocolate." I am always willing to investigate the accuracy of such a claim, so I stopped by the Freia shop and bought me some chocolates. I'm not sure if the particular ones I got were necessarily that old, but they were certainly delicious. I wasn't sure exactly what they were, but ended up having picked: dark chocolate patties, milk chocolate pretzels, orangey chocolate sticks, and scrumptious espresso-y niblets. The last were like chocolate-covered espresso beans, but with the bean magically mixed into the chocolate. Mmmm...

At some point (before, after, or amidst the chocolate? I actually don't remember) I stopped to get lunch at a cafeteria-sorta place called Kaffistova. Couldn't read much, so picked out some kiwi yogurt, an orange drink, and an open-faced sandwich that looked relatively filling. Open-faced sandwiches (or rather, a piece of bread with stuff on it), seems to be the most common Norwegian lunch. Was relatively tasty!

I spent a while going through the National Gallery, which was not very crowded, had lots of neat art, and cost only 0 kroner (http://www.google.com/search?q=0+nok+in+usd). Not a bad deal! It was strange but kind of liberating looking around by myself, like it was going around the city. It's weird not having anyone around to talk to or bounce ideas off of, but it leaves you free to totally go at your own pace. I could stop and read every little information thing (which I mostly did), or just move along. Whatever I wanted to do was uninanimously the most popular choice of the group. In any case, here I saw works by Munch (most well known piece: The Scream), a Van Gogh portrait, a Picasso piece that looked sort of messed up, and a bunch of other stuff.

Eventually trekked up a ways through some neighborhood streets (the map from the train station came in handy) to see the Vigeland Sculptures in Frogner Park. In the early 20s, Gustav Vigeland made an arrangement with the city to receive support and get a nice studio in exchange for "spending his creative life beautifying Oslo with this sculpture garden."

Vigeland designed the park and in ~20 years created 192 sculptures, with 600 figures.

A section of the huge, intricate monolith. I quoth Mr. Steves: "Three stone carvers worked daily for 14 years cutting Vigeland's full-sized plaster model into the final 180-ton, 50-foot-tall erection." (Ahem, his words, not mine.) Maybe they should call them the Vigeland and Friends Sculptures? How about that Mr. Steves and Friends?

And here's the mad little kid statue. Apparently it's one of the famous ones. Don't ask me.

So, that brings us to the point where I meander back toward the train station (actually, I'd already been there once to stick in more money for my luggage). Trains were leaving for the airport every 10 minutes (talk about a schedule!), so it was easy to catch one back to the airport. I checked in pretty easily with the eticket I'd printed out from the states, and sat around for a while before boarding. It was a small flight (though not as small as BVT to EWR), but had no seat assignments. Strange.

After ~2 hours, we neared Tromsø. There was a thick cloud layer, so as we were coming closer we could only get occasional peeks at peaks (ha!) coming through the white blanket. Then, we were descending through pure white and could see nothing. Finally, we broke through, with the island of Tromsø and the surrounding mountains spread out in a beautifully-lit expanse. I think it had been raining in the past couple days, but had dried up for our arrival. Everything seemed to have that post-rain freshness, with a renewed, healthy-alive feeling to the air and land. I think it was influenced by it being my first taste of late night sun (it was ~2300) and also just comes from being surrounded by snowy mountains.

I was met at the airport by Magnus, the "reception officer" for the IAESTE group in Tromsø. He's been tremendously helpful, going around with me to get my work permit, tax card, bus card, etc. At this point in the story he just brought me to where I'm living, though also had bought a frozen pizza and top ramen so that I'd have something in the kitchen. They're very well organized! My building is in a very nice area, though the view out my window is nothing to write home about. Oops.

They have funny looking cars in Norway. Also, note that this picture was taken two minutes shy of midnight. It's true what they say! The earth is round! At least, such a point of view does coincide with the strange solar behavior I have observed here. More on that later.

My cosy room. That "couch" is also the "bed". The back folds up in a funny way making it slightly wider, but I didn't figure that out for the first couple nights. And with another long day past, I was ready to sleep on anything.

So, this marks the end of my journey to, well, here. I've been doing stuff the last couple weeks, but it hasn't been as packed as the trip itself, so it won't be as much of a play-by-play analysis. Maybe. I'm taking the next week off of work to go on the 8-day "Arctic Week" expedition around northern Norway, which should be lots of fun and will probably generate many more details. Until then... ha det bra!

Oslo, Day 1

2005-07-14T01:58:34Z

Back again! So, when we left our heros, they were just arriving by plane in Oslo, and I happened to be on that plane as well. It was now morning on Monday, around 0930 (for reference, all of Norway is 9 hours ahead of PST, 6 past Vermont http://www.timezonecheck.com/). My body clock was beginning to learn just what was in store for it for the summer after another red-eye flight, but needlesstosay, I've been training it for years. It even was fairly quick going through the customs line, and the documents courtesy of IAESTE and my work permit application approval letter were enough to get my passport stamped and move on through. For those curious (don't know if I've mentioned it), my internship is through a program called IAESTE, the International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience (http://www.iaeste.org/).

The Oslo airport is about 30 miles from the city itself. Luckily, speedy, futuresque trains travel often between them. I swiped my credit card in the ticket machine, crossing my fingers for everything to just work, and lo and behold, it did. Two tickets popped out (one for the return trip), and I hopped on a train just as the doors were closing. The ride was short and sweet, through beautiful green countryside. I've always thought there's something magical about trains. Yes, well before the Hogwart's Express, though that's got it exactly too. Maybe it was images of The Polar Express from when I was little, or maybe it was one time when the Easter Bunny had somehow planned ahead and left goodies on the train I was taking one Easter morning (if I remember correctly). In any case, the Flytoget zipped me along to Oslo Sentralstasjon.

It was on the plane when English/Norwegian started to appear together, with the safety speech and captain's announcements. The train kept it up mostly (with both in the announcements). At the station, however, it was a fairly quick transition into most signage being only in Norwegian. Touristy things would still have English, but it was there that I began my mental shift back to early childhood by learning things via pictures and phonemic analysis. After wandering around confusedly for quite a while--or rather, I was exploring--I eventually made it to an information booth to pick up a map, touristy/trendy magazine, and hostel info. A quick stop at a minibank (that's what ATMs are called here), and out popped a whole lot of kroner. I didn't know what the exchange rate was (well I knew generally, but not how much it was exactly taking out of my account), or if everything jived with my US account, but again, it just worked. I guess they want to make it easy for people visiting to be able to spend money. Yay!

I decided to store my mega suitcase in a luggage locker (http://www.google.com/search?q=30+nok+per+day+in+usd+per+hour) rather than haul it around the city. I had that and a backpack, so I grabbed the things I would need for the day/night (e.g. my "Hi! I'm an American Tourist!" t-shirt... oh wait, left that at home), ditched the things I didn't need (e.g. umbrella--it was beautiful out) and hit the road. I should note that, while I am not one to contradict the omni-importance of bringing a towel with you when traveling to alien lands, a big sturdy backpack is also an excellent companion. At the suggestion of my dad, I got one the night before leaving. My poor, lovable, ancient backpack with holes would probably not have survived the load of stuff, nor would have my back. In any case, after filling the gazillion pockets with the stuff I needed and with gazillions of straps hanging out every which way, I headed out into Oslo.

My first destination was Use It, an awesome information center directed toward youth/students, but available to anyone. They have tons of information (they're the originators of the aforementioned magazine), free internet, and they cheerfully helped me book a place to sleep at a central, cheap hostel. So I then headed to the hostel, where I checked in and took a minute to kick off my shoes and rest for the first time in a while. One of my roommates for the night arrived shortly, a guy named Pascal (or something similar?) visiting from France. We decided to go out sightseeing a bit.

We went to the National Gallery first since it was supposedly closed on Tuesdays and came highly recommended from my friend Ricky. I'm sorry... Mr. Steves. Unfortunately, the sign out front reported that it's actually closed on Mondays, so we headed to the City Hall instead.

Because Norway is farther north, light has to bend faster to reach the north pole at the same time all the way around, so the sides of buildings actually appear to be curved.

The City Hall in all it's grandeur.

Ditto.

Pascal eventually left to go shopping, and I decided to check out the Akershus Fortress, which had some marvelous views and was briefly pictured in my last post. Back down in the harbor, I listened to the coolest brass+ street band. Two trumpets, trombone, tuba, french horn, and a drum set; players probably in their early 20s; totally clean, tight, jazzy sound. I was digging it. Figured I'd splurge on an official touristy thing and bought a ticket for a boat trip around Oslofjord.

Saw lots of little islands, mostly natural and isolated, some covered with houses and Norwegian flags. Here are a bunch of swimhouses (or swimsuit houses or something) on stilts over the water. Random fact: they were painted/decorated like their associated houses; color-coding at its... most architectural, or something.

After grabbing a late dinner and walking back to the hostel, I was pretty tired and ready to crash for the night. Thus ended my first day in Norway!

Leg, the first

2005-07-11T01:36:59Z

Prelude
Okay then! Here we are. A little more delayed than I would have liked, but I'll take what I can get. I haven't had too much free time at work to use the internet and update (though I got Thunderbird set up for e-mail and I have Trillian installed :)), and the library is only open during the week while I'm at work, but I am borrowing the computer of my generous neighbor to cleanse it of some evilness and just got internet working on it (with my other neighbor's username/password, I don't have one yet). Without further ado, le'z do it.

First, briefly, I shall just state that the last several weeks before leaving (well, longer, but who's counting) were a nonstop flurry of activity. As always, I followed the path of insanity through the end of the year, which was capped off by actually passing my classes and graduating, and, perhaps more stress-inducing, finishing grading for the class I was TAing. It was slightly anticlimactic to go through all the commencement/graduation festivities without having fully finished (grading), such that by the time I was truly finished with all things Stanford and ready to celebrate, everyone had hung up their party hats and I was long gone. Oh well. It still hasn't sunken in (sunk in?) that it's over... Ay!

SFO to BTV
So, the trip. I would never have managed to get out the door with everything (mostly) in order without my parents' help. But somehow, after tons of cleaning, packing, unpacking (presumably--most of my stuff still sat in boxes in our livingroom when I left), buying of various good things (travel alarm, watch battery, travel books, backpack), good times in Carmel, good eats, and all that jazz, I got out the door to head to the airport. I forgot to finish eating my chocolate mousse from dinner, and I maybe could have looked harder for an electric outlet converter, and I really wish I'd had time to finish figuring out the mass exodus of my Stanford e-mail account and afs space, but all in all there was a remarkable lack of things forgotten or unfinished. Oh, and I should have printed a copy of my presentation.

I took a red-eye flight to Vermont (with a layover in Chicago). Driving to the airport, the moon was huge and golden delicious on the horizon, a poetically beautiful night to put in my pocket, take with me to Norway, and pull out to reminisce about dark nights when I can't sleep. After a slightly elongated procession through the security gate (I got pulled to the side and they went through my delicately packed backpack, eventually digging out my toiletry bag and, after careful inspection, deciding my nail clipper set was not a bomb--I actually had to give the security guard a manicure to convince them the devices were functional), I made it to the plane. I sat next to a guy named Adam (I think), an Australian who was in the States to play tennis, getting my international meetings off to a good start. Watched The Pacifier, a hilaaarious flick about Vin Diesel and kids. Actually, it was entertaining enough. Managed to get only an hour or two of sleep, which was unfortunate, but cheap. Took a while for them to let us off the plane in the windy city, so I had to seriously book it over to my other gate (it was supposedly the same airport, but I'm not so sure...). Nice sunrise, though.

In classic airline style, they decided to fly my luggage to Zimbabwe instead of Vermont, and nonchalantly gave me and a bunch of other people forms to fill out, saying it would probably get there by the next morning. Okay, they didn't fly it to Zimbabwe, but it didn't "book it" as fast as I did to make the transfer. Luckily, *brilliantly*, I packed a pair of socks and underwear in my carry-on backpack for just such a scenario. After pulling them out, waving them in the face of the airline worker, and repeatedly shouting variations of "Haha, you thought you got me but I win!", I took the shuttle to the hotel.

Vermont
Vermont is nice. It is pleasantly green and has lots of brick buildings. Which look cool but fall down in earthquakes. Burlington, Vermont apparently hosts three colleges/universities, including a University of Vermont which hosted the TIME conference itself (http://time2005.cse.buffalo.edu/). It also has a library that offers free internet-use cards to any passersby who happen to stumble jetlaggedly in with an ID. Such as me! Or perhaps, such as I! Limited time, though. But jumping slightly backwards... After arriving, it was too early to check in, so I ate a lengthy, better-than-airline-pretzel-bag breakfast while reading in the Rick Steves Scandinavia book about Norway and Oslo (my intermediate destination). Eventually made myself at home, wandered around town, took a nap, and "mingled" at the conference reception with the other handful people who had arrived.

Short-circuiting, the conference went well, paper presentations filling most of the days. My own presentation went about as expected, mostly smooth though things I thought of later I could have done differently. Probably most fun was meeting and hanging out with people from other countries. The attendees mostly gravitated into groups by age, language, or originating school. A group of mostly graduate students (I from the US, Matthieu from France, Andreas from Germany, Sergio from Italy, and a couple of guys from Montreal) hung out a fair bit. It was an unexpected early bit of international-ism, but, in contrast with the coming months, turned around with me in my home country. I was particularly amused by Matthieu and Sergio's amazement at the fact that cars stop when you cross the street, and questions such as whether there are always so many ads on TV or how the rules of baseball work.

On one of the nights, there was even a "dinner cruise" on the lake just down the hill from the hotel. Here we have the first of the pictures.

See? It's green. And nice.

I couldn't see at all for the whole meal because of the freakin sun! No just kidding, it was pretty.

The silhouette of a person at an adjacent table, not connected to the conference, but likewise, partaking of some food.

The conference ended just before lunch on Saturday (we're now at... June 25th). I briefly met and hung out with a friend of my aunt's, who currently lives just near Burlington but is in fact going to be going to grad school in good old Newfoundland. We reminisced about the glory days of a cappella (he also sang in college), enjoyed some *ridiculously delicious* American flatbread (http://www.americanflatbread.com/ oh man it makes me hungry...), and generally chatted it up. I later met up with the international gang and we paraded the streets shouting multilingual obscenities for the rest of the night.

BTV to OSL
By the suggestion of the shuttle driver, I was scheduled to take the shuttle that would get me to the airport about an hour before my flight. When it was taking a little while to leave, I was slightly nervous about the time, but it ended up working smoothly (this time I pulled my nail clipper set out separately, making it easier for them to look suspiciously at it). Slightly cramped plane flight to Newark, where I had a comfortably long layover of 5-6 hours before the flight to Oslo. Herein, I consumed more fast food, walked around the terminal a lot, checked my e-mail on the handy-dandy internet stations (they charged something like 25 cents/min, though I think I got a few minutes free when my computer spontaneously crashed), and read a lot from my traveler's books. I would have built a fountain for Catherine Zeta-Jones, but I didn't see her.

Eventually made it to the plane. Sat next to a woman from Alabama, who happened to have lived in Marin recently for a year. She was going to Norway for her daughter's wedding (her daughter's fiance is Norwegian). I occupied the time by watching Maid in Manhattan (score!), trying to sleep (handful of hours), eating plane food, and more reading. If I'd thought ahead and were a wee bit gutsier, I might have brought a Chappie parody of the United "AirMall" magazine to leave in the seat pocket in front of me. Alas.

Oslo
We landed the next morning in Oslo. Unfortunately, it's getting late for me at the moment so I am going to postpone the story at this spot and leave you with a few more tantalizing pictures.

A view of the harbor...

... from up next to a fortress.

Cool cathedral.

The dispatch van for "Team Diplom". Norway has a brutal special-laws enforcement team known for their fast response, for using ferocious scare tactics, and for wearing furry orange suits. I swear, if you are heard mispronouncing one of the oft-mangled vowels--ø, æ, or å--they will swarm out of those trucks like bees from a hive. It's the freakiest thing I've ever seen.

These photos, along with all the others I've taken, can be found in their unfiltered glory at http://www.stanford.edu/~bdangelo/trip/ (clean and simple, you know? it's just: trip.). The billion mountain shots will be eventually panoramic-ified. Any recommended software?

So until we meet again, ha det bra!

The beginning

2005-07-01T14:58:27Z

begin, v. 1. intr. To open operations upon or in reference to (any action), to set oneself effectively to do (something), to be at the point of first contact with; to enter upon, take the first step, do the first or starting part; to commence, to start. An abstract notion, which is reached in various languages through the concrete notions of opening, broaching (F. entamer), going into or entering upon (L. inre), rousing oneself to, attacking (L. adorri), setting oneself to (F. se mettre), seizing hold of, or taking in hand (G. anfangen), rousing oneself from inaction into activity (start).

It is with great excitement that I hearby proclaim this entry to be the first official post of Ben's Summer Adventures, 2005. You could say that in some sense I am opening operations upon or in reference to <<being in Tromsø, Norway>>, that I am setting myself effectively to do <<a bunch of work at FAST Search & Transfer ASA>>, that I am at the point of first contact with <<a new (to me) culture/language>>, that I am taking the first step and doing the first or starting part <<in many travels>>, that I am commencing and starting <<stuff>>, that I am abstractly speaking in various languages <<about concrete>>, that I am opening, broaching, going into or entering upon <<several buildings>>, that I am rousing myself to attack <<everyone whom I encounter>>, that I am setting myself to seize hold of or take in hand <<many digital pictures>>, and of course that I am rousing myself from inaction into activity. Phew.

But seriously, folks, it's great to be here. I welcome friends, family, and the rest of you to what will hopefully be a regularly-updated account of my time here in Norway. I will try to keep it somewhat entertaining, though I may occasionally delve into random uninteresting details that will bore those of you not closely related to me or those that have a life...

Now, it's going to take a while to get caught up from the last week and a half of travels, as my access to the internet is somewhat sporadic at the moment, but I'll do my best. Also, I haven't yet managed to get my pictures off of my camera, but they will come soon and should make things more interesting for the lazy or illiterate.

Unfortunately, the library is closing right now, so I'm going to have to actually get to the good stuff later... Back soon!

Because it would make me sad to post less than once every three months...

2005-04-25T11:21:09Z

And here, in quick and dirty list format, the briefest of updates.

Graduation: imminent
It turns out I'll likely be able to count units from a class I took years ago toward my masters, thus completing the unit requirement and allowing me to get a non-fake diploma this year (there's twooo of them!). I think a math minor will happen too, as a fun bonus.

Job next year: Google!
The intense but admittedly sometimes fun job search process (it's all about the puzzley interview questions) is finally over. There's something extremely ego-boosting about getting job offers; people are basically telling you, we think we can tell who you are and we are willing to pay you large sums of money for you to join us. I ended up accepting a job at Google, which was easily my first choice. Woohooooo! It is quite a phenomenon, and I really have no idea how long it will last, but I am so excited to be a part of it.

Summer: Land of the Midnight Sun!
Something I'd applied for and didn't get last summer, I'm going to be doing an overseas internship this summer in the northernmost region of Norway. Why? Just because, okay? It'll be an awesome experience unlike anything I've done before. Yeah Norway!

Everything else: zipping by like always
So often these days, when I have a chance to turn my head to the side and pull a gasp of air through the rolling surface of the water, I try to stop and think about things. To appreciate things. It's such a weird time for me, and I'm so aware of how rich and dense my time in college has been. I'm also aware of the many many things I wish I'd done, and how, seemingly by chance, my course has been shaped. I'm cool with it, while simultaneously it totally freaks me out. The older I get, the more often time pulls one over on me, laughing hysterically, while I sit, stunned, looking behind me and trying to figure out what in the world just happened. Will I ever learn?

Short thoughts

2005-01-25T11:10:18Z

This is the coolest stuff I've seen in a while:
http://www.strandbeest.com/
http://www.sodaplay.com/
I love the intersection of science and art, the technical and the creative. Amazing!

It was very strange walking around and biking home today with the iPod. It was like life as usual, but with a background soundtrack. I'm just not used to hearing music independently from stuff around me, at least not independent over some distance. Totally fun.

The land of the free

2005-01-22T14:08:14Z

Unintentionally, the last two days have been full of free stuff. Firstly, my meals were all free: yesterday for lunch I had food from a group lunch at my department, yesterday for dinner I had pizza at an information session about working for Amazon, today for lunch I ate at a resume workshop thing, and today for dinner I had pizza at an information session about working for Google. Secondly, and more awesomerly, at the aforementioned information session for Amazon I won the raffle they had and they gave me a 20GB iPod! They just *handed* me an iPod! How cool is that. From what I can tell, it's almost a $300 value. I probably could have sold it for some amount, but I would probably never spend that much to get one, and it would be pretty fun to have, so I figured I might as well keep it (how's that for inconsistent logic... hmm, I wonder if there are theoretical formulations for this kind of asymmetry in how people value things). In any case, I opened it.

I decided to name the iPod Wallace. Any name should sound just a little silly, shouldn't it? The very act of naming a technological device is amusing, and I think "Wallace" captures the facets of this idea well. It sounds kinda old-fashioned, kinda British, kinda butler-esque, and it is vaguely reminiscent of Wilson, the beloved volleyball from Cast Away. And of course, said over and over to yourself, you will admit that it is in fact a very strange word.

As I'm sure it is for most births, when Wallace was born I was impressed with the beauty and serenity of the whole process. Apple sure knows how to do it right. Everything is so clean and smooth; it makes you feel... suave. So, good job, designers. Not so good job, however, to the people who wrote iTunes. First of all, why does it take up such a ridiculous amount of memory when it runs? More annoyingly, why is it so slow and have such poor response time when it needs to deal with a cd (it has major problems with this) or an iPod in the background? More annoyingly, why were the iPod options designed so stupidly? After I'd spent hours uploading my music to the iPod, I was looking at the options in iTunes. I'd noticed that it copied over a bunch of random playlists onto the iPod that I didn't want (Purchased Music, Recently Played, and the like). I selected the option to copy over only selected playlists instead of "all music and playlists", intending it to keep all of the songs but nominally remove some of the playlists (I viewed them as just a shortcut to songs in the Library). However, since I didn't have any explicit playlist with most of my music, it immediately deleted 95% of my music off the iPod. Whaaaat? And when I realized it and selected the other option again, did the iPod have the songs cached in memory? No. It's now redownloading everything. All the same, I probably should not be complaining...

As was hinted at above, I've been doing a lot more recently in the realm of job exploration. Eeeeeeep! Not so long ago, it seemed way far off and unrelated to my immediate reality. I've definitely been apprehensive to enter the real world. As of late though, I've gotten more comfortable with the idea of working. So, put together the resume, attended two days of job fair-ness, talked with people and friends from several companies, got various logoed shtuffs. Still interested in trying something overseas too... one option would be to actually do next fall with Stanford overseas in Berlin, which would be super cool because I could do intensive language study there and would be eligible for an internship there when the quarter finished. The only problem is that I'd have to take a full course load to be eligible, which would be crazy expensive with no financial aid or assistantships. I've got to apply by tomorrow if I want to do it! Ay the choices. List of possibilities for what countries/internships are available through IAESTE go out in a week, though I'm not positive I'm actually eligible since I've taken 10 units the past two quarters. Hope so.

I officially finished my arrangement of Truce. Yaaay! Whether by coincidence or impetus, a bunch of other people are finishing arrangements, which is so exciting! Good songs, too. About time we all got on top of things. On a recording note: we recorded Headstrong and Memory Remains this past week. It's funny. I wouldn't have used to classify myself as someone who really loved rock music; music with a good beat, yeah, but it's not like I was a big electric guitar, drums, bass, go crazy rock out kinda guy. But I've definitely acquired the ability to totally get into rock music. For example, Headstrong is so. much. fun. to sing. And Memory Remains is so. much. fun. to percuss. It's like getting possessed.

And speaking of unbelievable awesomeness in music, check out Venus Hum. How have I had a bunch of mp3s of theirs for a while and not been listening to them constantly? I don't know, but I just now ordered a cd of theirs with a Christmas gift card. Amazing. I've found theirs is a style I am consistently drawn to, e.g. that also in The Postal Service, Jem, and Treewave. Electronic, intricate processing creating rich soundscapes, with happy or fun or catchy or body-tingling or poetic melodies.

As iTunes and Wallace near synchronization completion, and I'm progressing through a cold, I shall bid this digital pensieve (Harry Potter-style) adieu.

"Some of my favourite colours in the world
Beat against my eyelids with the blues of green hummingbirds"

The switch

2005-01-10T14:23:15Z

An idea idly bandied about in the past, I'm now using the grand browser of Firefox. Well the idea that I'm using it wasn't bandied about, but the idea that maybe it would be nice. The straw that pushed me over the camel's back was the super cool, super circular context menu demonstrated by zozo.

And while I was at it, and while AIM continues to expand its interface with ads (they walk, they talk, they eat your children) and unwanted complexities, and while I'm in a state of instant message confusion thanks to AOL's stupid policies, I downloaded and am trying out Gaim. Mighty fine, mighty clean! Screenname antics to be resolved sometime soon, I hope.

Still figuring out classes. And I'm beginning to actually think about jobs and life, as earlier this week I spent all night putting together my resume in LaTeX. It actually felt like quite an accomplishment, collecting all my information and organizing it all nice and purdy-like. I also got on the ball with figuring out Tau Beta Pi stuff, which I coulda shoulda done last school year or up till now. So I'll hopefully be tutoring a short bit every week for that. Speaking of which, I have office hours later today for which I ought to look over some stuff and be well rested!

Oh but before I forget... I'm almost finished with the arrangement! It's crazy. I worked on it maybe twice at the end of the summer when I started it. I next worked on it at the end of break, then last week again. I finished all the parts after only 4 (I think) sessions! I've continued to tweak it a bit, and still need to put the syllables in in the next couple days, but I'm amazed how little of a struggle it was when I just sat down and did it. Four years of empty words, Ben. "Yes, I hope to do an arrangement soon." "I know, you'd think since I've got a musical bent I'd be one of the arrangers, but no." The funny thing is that I didn't really intend to finish this one any more than I've intended to do other stuff I haven't done. In the past couple weeks, there were just a couple times when I happened to be like "oh heck, why not work on it for just a bit," and then it happened to turn into the full arrangement. It's like sometimes I'll start something intending to do just a little (e.g. I've noticed it when doing dishes or cleaning something, or even regarding staying up late), but once I've started it kind of rolls along much more than I intend. A result of inertia? Should I attempt to take advantage of this self-property by just starting the things I know I should be doing, even when I don't have a strong inclination to dive into the whole thing? Ooh the possibilities.

What is it

2005-01-05T12:45:27Z

Why am I so so bad at going to sleep at a decent hour? Is it because my being conscious of the fact that I should sleep is a wimpy poke compared to my natural desire to stay up and do stuff? Is it because I'm too sleep-deprived to be able to think rationally about my priorities? In many areas of my life I think I'm too good a talker and not a good enough walker. Actually, no, I know... it's not talk vs. walk, it's think vs walk. Hmm, interesting. This is huge. But... how do you teach yourself to walk?

Like, wow

2005-01-03T11:22:04Z

Rock my socks, I actually did it. I put some time this evening into working on my arrangement! I should have done lots of research work and arranging over the break, and I knew in this last day I wouldn't get any work work done, so I decided to work on good old Truce.

I'm really excited about how it's coming along. I've finished up through measure 42 (and am happier with the chorus now) and have left: verse 2 part deux, bridge, postbridge breakdown thing (? unless it seems too boring and gets dropped), and any glamorifications of later choruses. I'm slightly worried that there's too much variation, as the chorus is really the only major section that repeats, but we'll see.

Will I actually finish? Should it be a New Year's resolution? Tune in next week on 60 minutes.

Heading back in the morrow. Wheeee, new quarter.

Greetings, 2005

2005-01-02T14:51:29Z

Welcome to... now. I didn't expect you so soon! I mean, I did of course, you're right on time, but... I wasn't quite finished cleaning the house? Please. Make yourself at home. Your relative was just here and left. A nice fellow, we had some good times, but some rough times, too. I hope you've brought, well, hope.

So. It's been like, what, a billion years? Whew! Christmas break = ahhhhhhh. Talk about pure relaxation. Sleep happened. Not in a sleep-debt-is-gone way, but in a greeting-an-old-friend way. And of course, greeting old friends happened. The annual tradition of going to my high school choir concert was awesome, as there were tons of people back, helped by the fact that it is the director's last year (soo sad! it's the end of a chapter in history). It's so much fun, and so trippy, to see people after years and years. In the context of all the experiences I've had since high school (it feels like so. long. ago.), I can't comprehend how much everyone must have done. I wish I kept better in touch with people. I wish I could have gotten to know people better, too. I should take it as a lesson to better get to know the people around me now!

And here's this: identity crisis: am I a techie or a fuzzy? (Is it weird to use two colons in a sentence? See, even that seems like a fuzzy thing to care about, but then it reminds me of the idea of scopes and if-then-else parsing from computer languages.) Here of course I use the terms in the Stanford sense; I'd say a techie is one who loves technical ideas, an engineer-sorta person, while a fuzzy is one who loves wordy, talk-about-it ideas. Analogywise, techie : fuzzy :: problem set : essay. Obviously, I can't deny being a techie. I love numbers, math, computers, and all that stuff. But then I also love language, words, artistic stuff. Recently, and I'll get to this more in a minute, I've watched tons of movies with "director commentaries" and whatnot, and I find them fascinating. I usually think things like "oh, the idea of writing an essay analyzing the characters of a story and talking about symbolism is boring and totally no fun," and yet I love hearing and thinking about these sorts of things in movies. So now I'm wondering, maybe I'm just (majorly) turned off of the idea of writing essays, but I'm really a good part fuzzy after all and I've just been convincing myself otherwise. What a frightening thought :). I do think there're interesting ideas floating around and which deserve more thinking about... What's the difference between a techie and a fuzzy? Do both share an interest in the same kind of knowledge and just like thinking about it in different ways, or are there fundamentally differences in the sources of attraction? My initial proposition is that people are simply attracted to beauty, be it in the form of the simple profound truth of an equation or the delicious poetic turn of a phrase. Maybe we all have glasses on with different colored lenses, and we simply grasp onto whatever we happen to see.

Yeah, I've seen a ton of movies over break, and it's become kind of an obsession watching all the special features, including watching the movie a second time with commentary from the director/actors/whoever. It's so much fun! It's amazing observing the vast spectrum of styles and stuff talked about in what is a relatively new medium (DVD features for the crazy masochistic viewers). Of the various speakers, directors seem to be most likely to have moments of poignancy and generally interesting comments. Other crew tend to be directed toward whatever their responsibility was (sound, expenses, etc), which is what you'd expect, but sometimes they're annoyingly focused so. Actors, well, they're the trickiest bunch. They tend to have the most annoyance-potential, as evidenced by Jerry Maguire. Director Cameron Crowe was funny and interesting, while Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Renee Zellweger mostly acted like teenagers (especially Ms. Zellweger). It's sad when a character is so likable and the actor goes and acts unlikable in real life.

I think it would be so much fun to be involved in making a movie; I'd love to experience some part of it someday. Acting seems like fun too, but I don't know if there's any practical conduit I can manage in the near future. Maybe if we ever get around to making some short films (Buuuuuud...).

And so I really must cash in to bed. It's a last carefree, splurge of a night at home before heading back to school, but I don't want to dip too into the sleep reserve I've built up these last few weeks. Tales of shopping, circadian rhythms, and resolutions are for another time.

Onward and upward.

Sleepibuster

2004-12-09T12:45:52Z

is my new term for the act of refusing to yield to the coming of the new day by not going to sleep. Think Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

The fluidity of time confuses my days of late in such a way. It's been one blitz after the other for a long time. Classes this quarter, despite being only three in number, were rather intense. Randomized algorithms was one of the hardest classes I've taken, which was... nice, though I don't think I learned as much from it as I should have. Machine learning is a great class; I learned a ton, it was challenging, interesting material, and it was well organized. I've discovered the following key points that make me best able to learn:
* not having to take notes. Writing stuff down takes focus away from listening to what's being said, and I always end up being a few lines behind, missing questions that the prof asks and explanations that aren't written on the board.
* being provided notes ahead of time that mirror exactly the content of the lecture and which are verbose and precise. Maybe reading the book would help, but it's nice to know that the notes exactly match what's covered in lecture. They're really helpful to follow along, skip ahead, and look back at later.

So, I'm super glad I stayed another year for the coterm. It feels different being in an apartment, taking fewer classes, and working with a TAship and RAship. Man, I've gotta do so much more research work over Christmas break. The apt life is tons of fun. It's so much nicer to be able to sit in the common room in slippers with a mug of hot chocolate or tea doing a problem set with other people around than sitting at a computer in a dorm room by oneself. Not that the latter was the way of things, but still. There's virtually no time to cook anymore like we could over the summer, which is unfortunate, though Thanksgiving provided a brief food boost to get me through till the quarter ends.

(I'm waiting for Matlab, which is the only reason I don't feel too guilty taking the time to post right now. But I've realized I think I need to redo everything it's been computing tonight. Oops.)

What am I going to do with my life, eh? I'm sitting here unsure of everything, but stupid time rushes up and passes me by. Apply for PhD programs in CS? I've been saying "oh yeah, I'm probably going to apply to PhD programs this year", but have I done anything for it yet? No. Have I done anything looking-for-a-job-wise? No. So what's going to happen next year? No. I mean, I don't know. More and more the idea of doing something overseas sounds cool, but I've had no time to look into stuff. Should I finish classes and graduate by the end of next summer? Or should I try to do an overseas internship for the summer, come back and finish up classes next fall, then work or something and apply for PhD programs for the following year? Auuughhh. I hate when my inability to get things done early impacts my choices, yet somehow it always happens. Well, not somehow, it's precisely cause the quarter's are so packed. But my recognition of this doesn't seem to change anything.

Whew. Time for a little m-file fun.

Da Chain

2004-11-21T00:39:09Z

(A) First, recommend to me:
1. a movie:
2. a book:
3. a musical artist, song, or album:

(B) I want everyone who reads this to ask me five questions, no more, no less. Ask me anything you want.

(C) Then I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this allowing your friends to ask you anything.

Ohh

2004-11-17T10:44:05Z

Sleep: the miracle sleep!

Tasks remaining this quarter: many
Odds of survival: opposite of many, as in unmany, as in slim odds.

Classes hard, good, learning, sleep, singing, future, memories, projects, late days.

Bye!

Der

2004-11-07T14:21:44Z

Busydaysrightquicknospaces!

Until I have time to update for serious, here's something stolen:

I _______ Ben.
Ben is _______.
If I were alone in a room with Ben, I would _______.
I think Ben should _______.
Ben needs _______.
I want to _______ Ben.
Someday Ben will _______.
Ben reminds me of _______.
Without Ben _______.
Memories of Ben are _______.
Ben can be _______.
_______ is how I describe meeting Ben.
Worst thing about Ben is _______.
Best thing about Ben is _______.
I am _______ with Ben.
Ben likes _______ too much.
Ben loooooooooooves me. Yeah.

Also, here are some pics from Friday morning of the sunrise (en route to turning in a problem set). Featuring the silhouestrious Hoover Tower, the Gates 4th floor balcony view, and the sunset/sunrise presettings on my camera: http://www.stanford.edu/~bdangelo/morning/.

Back to packing the minutes with productivity, oh yeah...

Tick, tock

2004-10-05T07:56:32Z

And so time flies by. The quarter has begun, Harmonics has begun (it's true), classes are underway, research paper writing is in progress...

There is much to say, but it must alas wait because I need to get up early as beans! And I'm attempting to turn over a new leaf in terms of being efficient with my time and actually getting things done and staying on top of life. It's the new (school) year's resolution!

Sweet dreams.

...

2004-09-19T10:55:43Z

I love it.