Things Begin To Move – Slowly

Two weeks have passed since my last entry, and the meantime has mostly been wasted^W occupied by university organisation.

Allow me to explain: NTNU has a public website listing the schedule for all courses. Fine. It also has an online board called It’s Learning (do we want It to learn?). The latter is mostly for dissemination of handouts, exercises and scheduling notices for special cases. I have a user account, but each lecture needes to seperately register my user as one of its members for me to see the pertaining posts. Obviously, this is centralism in action, intended to replace the individual mailing lists, forums or newsgroups so far used by courses to spread information. In the last semester, It’s Learning had been a sideshow. Only one of my lecturers really used it, and she always had printed handouts with her as well.

This semester, everything is different. I want to go to four lectures, but three of them are not when they are supposed to be. The professors are freely rescheduling, appearantly relying on It’s Learning to keep everybody informed. Except for me, since I am not entered as a member of the course. So, to get registered. Compare now the steps for a norwegian student and an Erasmus student:

Norwegian:
log onto studentweb (another online service that deals amongst other things with exams) and register electronically
OR
head to student services right in the middle of the campus
OR
ask the lecturer

ME
ask my neighbour, since nobody told me anything (the international office does not mention It’s Learning once)
THEN
realise that international students cannot use studentweb, since we are not given an account
SO
go to student services, who politely refuse, saying that they are not responsible, but are not certain who is
DO NOT
go to the international office. It’s on the other side of campus and already closed
HEAR
rumours that the institute can register me
GO
to institute and be politely informed that the individual lecturers can help me
SEND
mail to all my lecturers to please enter me
RECEIVE
confirmation by two of them, hear nothing from the other two.

The result of these exploits is that I spend rather little time in the university. I hope that will change soon.
If anybody wonders how I got registered for my courses last semester, the international office did it when I registered for my exams. But I don’t want to when I have never even been to two courses.

I am trying to show patience and make the best of it (aka extended holiday). My course situation as it stands is this:

1.) Solid state physics II
Schedule cleared up, I have been to one lecture and felt it had potential to become interesting.

2.) Complex Analysis
Went there initially, but due to a the SSP2 exercise being rescheduled, I can go to numerical physics instead. CA was rather boring, anyway.

3.) Optics II
Went to the first lecture, has since completely eluded me. I am currently waiting for my email to a fellow student to be answered.

4.) Quantum Chemistry
I met the professor on thursday. He then failed to localize his own exercise group, but told me the place and time of the next lecture. We shall see…

5.) Numerical Physics
A course which sounds very interesting, but collided with SSP2. Due to a rescheduling I can now attend. First lecture for me is on tuesday.

As you can see, the gears are starting to turn, but I am rather horrified by the terrible organisation here. I’ll close on a positive note: My quantum optics exam has been corrected, and has received a B (roughly = 85%). I consider that a very good result.

Act II Opening. Part Three: Musings

There are some things I have been thinking about; nothing concrete but more general issues. Consider it your dose of wannabe-philosophy for the day.

[h3]Home[/h3]
What does it mean to "be home"? Where is home? I am not bothered by a lack of home, but more by an excess of it. Currently, three places vie for this position.

The first is Niederzier, the small village in the Rur plains that saw my first eighteen years of life. It is certainly the place I know best, but I left it four years ago and I have not really looked back. I do of course love to visit my parents there, and I like our mutual friends and acquaintances. But outside of this circle, Niederzier has always been characterised more by its failings than by its virtues. Too small, too far away, too boring. One cannot expect much of a 3,000 people village. I think it is safe to say that if my parents moved elsewhere, I would never set foot there again.

The second place is Aachen. A city of 280,000, it sits right on the nexus of Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. The nightlife is dominated by the >40,000 students and while less varied then that of the great Ruhr cities, there is little to complain about. My brother Matthias and of course my student friends live there. I know the city itself rather well and quite like it. It's a nice city to walk in; varied, not too big, with lots of nice old or at least interesting buildings. The university is a mixed bag; they do a lot of useless stuff, and not all of the physicists are really that great, but there are a lot of interesting things going on and the opportunities for my future academic career look bright.

Last is Trondheim, the third largest city of Norway, at 160,000. That doesn't stop it from being bit of a provincial nest, in my opinion. The city as such has some very obvious charms: Free nature, seaside air, a scenic valley and the Norwegian timber houses make a really great picture. The downtown is filled with old stone and timber buildings and nice to walk in as well. The university is posh and well-reputed, but their physics department is not particularly impressive. I get the feeling they mostly do bachelors here and do not cooperate with the engineers as much. Certainly, the available lectures are rather sparse, and if some of the professors are doing interesting research, they are not telling me about it. NTNU in general has a problem with organisation; there is a tight organisation in place, but it is being ignored more often that not, making daily business a mix of bureaucracy and improvision that I find rather hair-rising.

With Niederzier out of the running, what about Aachen or Trondheim? I would have to say that Aachen carries the win. Trondheim is wonderful in many ways, but the less exciting academic prospects, the winter problem and the still-existing language barrier are speaking against it. I have considered doing a language course again this semester, but have decided against it, since it takes a lot of time and the places are very limited. I think it unlikely that I will move to Trondheim permanently, so the value of improved language ability is limited. That makes Aachen the place I feel most at home; but beyond all rational arguments, it is simply the feeling of a place that matters, and after walking through the christmas market under a light december drizzle, I have to say: Yep, it's home.

[h3]Death[/h3]
Cheerful, aren't I? Well, the topic is sort of offering itself. In the last three years, my three living grandparents died, and just a few days ago, a good friend`s father died at the tender age of sixty-five. I have had a number of interesting discussions on this with people.

The most basic fact is: If you are alive, you are going to die. Even if we surpassed age and disease, we would still have enemies; and if we didn't, we'd make some. Even neglecting all these, there is the question how well a human mind would cope with eternity. My suspicion is "horribly." Nevertheless, life is something to be treasured; accepting your own death as something that happens is a bit too blase for my taste. That poses the question "when is the time to die?" Is the death of a 95-year old less regrettable than than of a 12-year old? Intuitively, my answer would be "yes." If asked to justify this, I would argue that the 95-year old has experienced a long life, and the 95 is already a rather high age; there is only so much one can ask for. One point in life then, is to experience the world. There is also a limited life expectancy, and those who exceed it are fortunate, or have contributed to it by a healthy life style. It makes little sense to call something tragic that happens to 80% of all people, so death in high age is not a particular tragedy. It is regretful, and the loss will be felt by those close to the deceased, but beyond that it is only the natural course of the world.

On the other hand, younger deaths [i]are[/i] tragic. They are nevertheless something that happens, with o without the deceased's doing. Of course, not everyone can live to be a hundred; we did not evolve to have the life we'd like best, we evolved to survive as a species. Our medical efforts manage to push our life expectancy higher and higher, but I suspect that there is a limit; maybe not at a hundred, but somewhere, biology will show us a wall that cannot practicably be scaled. I have reason to hope that I will still be around in fifty-sixty years to watch how far we have gotten. Until then, there is a lot of life to be lived.

Act II Opening. Part Two: Christmas At Home

Hello again! Today's topic are the two weeks I spent home in Germany over Christmas. Pictures have been edited and commented, but still need to be uploaded. I still have trouble accessing my webspace under windows.

I left Trondheim on the 21st of december. It was high time as well; the others had all left sunday and the last two days alone were too boring. The journey itself was free of any excitement, but at least I had company: Verena, Thomas and some of the others were in Vaernes and Oslo at the same times as I. Nevertheless, I did manage to finish the ZEIT and a thin book by Feynman in the course of the day. I also took some rather nice pictures of clouds and mountains. The best moment of the flight was when we first rose above the clouds, and I saw the sun that had been denied to me for several days, shining and glorious.
Eventually, I neared Merzenich, were my parents would pick me up. It was really good to see them again, although there had been much more contact than in Canada. Phone calls have become much cheaper, especially due to VoIP. I was rather tired, and we had full days coming up, so we had a quiet dinner and a long walk, before going to bed. One thing I was surprised to realise was how much I had missed the hearty german cooking and bread.

The next day, Thomas and Erin (my oldest brother and his wife, for reference) arrived from Amsterdam and I spent a lot of time talking with them and going shopping with them. Thomas is the one in the family I usually see the least of, since he left home when I was ten and spent a lot of time abroad. We also took some time to acquire our christmas tree; one of the trees in our garden had grown too high, and Bernhard wanted to cut it down and use the tip as a christmas tree. So we did, and in the end, while not particularly conical or in fact, straight, it had a nice, authentic feel to it. On the 23rd, we went to Aachen to catch the last day of the christmas market. I had a nice belgian waffle and we all had Gluehwein. Some things are simply a must.

On christmas eve, we started the day by going to the Carolus spa in Aachen. We met Matthias there and embarked on our three hour relaxation trip. Sauna, water, sauna, steam bath, pool… the usual. After that, we went home, had lunch and decorated the tree. As the evening approached, everyone finished preparing their presents. Most noticeable among mine was the picture book for Roswitha and the magnetic toy for Bernhard. I hope it's doing to his productivity what it did to mine.
Eventually, we all gathered in the living space. In deference to several family members with coughs, we skipped the customary caroling. Thus came the opening of the gifts and their discussion. The most important gift I received was probably the cook book my mother gave me, which features common German dishes, most of which are not too difficult to do. I already tried the baked noodles on monday – delicious. After the gifts, we had christmas dinner, in this case dear with red cabbage. Tasty!
In the evening, we went to the church service in our old schools chapel. The sermon was a little bit controversial, talking blithely about the wonder of birth and the overwhelming light and Jesus going to Bethlehem (would he get past the checkpoint with that beard of his, I wonder). Well, nothing else was to be expected.

The next days continued in the vein of good food and family, until Thomas and Erin left. From then on, the focus shifted from family to friends and acquaintances. I spent a lot of time with my friends in Aachen. Despite communication via Skype and ICQ being common, meeting face to face again is nice. I also took the time to see Matthias twice in that week, staying over once. Of course, I had quantum optics to worry about as well, so I spent several hours each day revising. I spent silvester with my friends; we had a nice evening with raclette, then fireworks, then settlers of Catan.

In the new year, we kept getting invited to peoples' places; old friends, the neighbours, my great-aunt, my godmother. Then, Thomas godfather visited us, complete with wife and four children. It always gets rather lively when they come.
At the end of my stay in Germany, Eric came to Aachen for his semi-annual visit. A walk through Aachen, lunch at the favourite chinese restaurant, the image show and talk about Socorro. My impression was mainly that I'd be bored out of my skull if I tried to live there. More strength to Eric for going there voluntarily. However, it seems now quite definite that he will not return to Aachen. Most likely, he will finish his master in Southhampton, and then… who knows.

The last day before my return was reserved for family. We took a beautiful walk in the still-snowy Eifel around a dammed lake, and afterwards had a very nice lunch.

It was good to see everyone again, but it the time had come to return to Trondheim, face the quantum optics exam and begin the new semester. Visiting the family is always nice, but it has to stay a visit.

Act II Opening. Part One: First Week Back

Greetings, everyone. I hope everybody has had an enjoyable christmas and a good start into the new arbitrary calendar unit. Considering the time since my last entry, I have decided that the first post in my second semester in Trondheim will be split in three parts. Part One will deal with my week here, parts two and three will follow over the weekend and expound on my christmas in Germany and some general musings on my life in general.

I invite you in, then!

I returned to Trondheim no later than last sunday; the semester was due to start on monday, and the quantum optics exam loomed ahead. The journey itself was smooth, cheap and, ah yes, excruciatingly boring. I caught the train from a station close to Niederzier, arrived at Cologne/Bonn airport, waited, flew to Oslo, waited some more, flew to Vaernes, took the long bus trip to Trondheim and walked home. Total time: 9 hours. Total material read: The whole ZEIT and 250 pages of “Smoke and Mirrors,” which is thereby completed. I spent the rest of sunday restoring my computer, chatting with Tommy and building my lecture schedule.

A word on my course selection: I have one course that I really should take: Advanced solid state physics. Added to that are Quantum Chemistry as a continuation of my chemical hobby, Advanced Optics to complement my knowledge from Laser Technology, and Complex Analysis. The latter might be replaced by Numerical Physics. I’d like that a lot more, but it collide with solid state. Now I hear that both lectures changed their times, so I will have to reevaluate. Complex Analysis is solid, but probably limited in its use to me.

Monday started in an unfriendly way with a lecture at 8:15 – optics. I got up early and drudged down the hill, only to find a post-it on the door announcing that the course would begin at 9:15 – wonderful. Once it did begin, we covered organisational topics and a small overview over the subject material. It sounds like a moderate look into classical optics, but it is based on the Hecht, which is pretty strong stuff. I met Lars in the course, who offered to meet at his place on thursday to cooperate on the QO exam. After that I went home, studied some for quantum optics and played Bomberman with Werner, who’d leave on Wednesday.

Tuesday started with the first complex analysis lecture at 8:15; then solid state but that didn’t take place. In the afternoon, Werner and I went for a walk, before he had his little goodbye dinner with friends. The QO exam was due to start on Wednesday, so I wanted to go to bed earlier. Before that, I checked for Bo-Sture’s last mail to see whether it gave a room number. No, his latest mail had come at six o’clock, and had the exam attached. Aaah! Time to get working.

I shall not cover the next 72 hours in detail – suffice to say they were filled with frustration, wonder, enlightenment, satisfaction, compromise and cooperation. I was positively surprised at how well I was able to deal with these (rather strange) physics. The others were a great help as well, not to mention motivational support. In the end, I think I completed maybe 70% of the six exercises, and considering their difficulty, that is more than satisfactory. I am not at all joking when I say that this was the most difficult exam I have ever had in university; it was also one of the most interesting ones, and probably the only one that allowed me to learn more during the exam itself. After this, the coming semester will be a breeze.

The weekend is dedicated to enjoyment and relaxation; I will try to do the other two parts of this entry and get my pictures online.