On Roads Long Known

I’ve spent the past week living at home with my parents, and at the moment it looks like I’ll stay here for the next month, something I haven’t really done since I moved out when I began university. It’s different to live together with somebody else again, instead of having my mostly self-contained one-room flat. For the time being, I enjoy the upsides: Nice company, better meals, a house to live in and always someone to talk to. I expect that after a while, I’ll miss the proximity to the city and the independence that living in a dormitory brings, but for the time being I’m quite fine where I am. The village I live in is still pretty much how I remember it, and the fields and hills haven’t changed much, either. Thus the title.

I am not just loafing around, though, mark my words. The past week I was occupied saying hello to a lot of people whom I haven’t seen in a year, checking up on my rooming applications and arranging a date for my laser technology exam. It’s in mid-august, if anybody’d like to know. Also, my brother’s car broke down with a hole in the radiator; if your cooling water is dripping onto the asphalt, that is commonly taken to be a bad sign. In fact, the car is in repair since this morning, so with a bit of good luck it’ll be back in action tomorrow.

Concerning the room: I applied to two dormitories in Aachen (maximally allowed are applications to three at the same time). The first one is the [url=http://www.demag.rwth-aachen.de new=false]Demag[/url], a medium-sized house with a roof terrace and located close to the north-west corner of downtown, where the university has its inner campus. The second one is the [url=http://www.halifax.rwth-aachen.de new=false]Halifax[/url], which is much newer and shinier but slightly less familiar and further out. Actually, the distance is not so bad but the Halifax is literally king of the hill. I spent ten months living on top of a hill, I don’t need to segue into another eighteen months of it. Although granted, the Hörn is much less steep than Moholt. The selection process at the Demag operates via application meetings, where each potential tenant can present themselves and the assembled house representants choose. The Demag itself is separated into individual rooms on corridors. The Halifax, on the other hand, is divided into communes. Each commune that has to fill a room gets six applicants and chooses one. So room availability is unpredictable, and although I think I’m a pretty decent neighbor, I’m not the one I’ll have to convince. We shall see. But I know that in august the particle physics practical will start up, and I really want to live in Aachen again when that happens.

Until then I ward of feelings of laziness by studying for my laser technology exam. I’ve completed the introductory once-over of the first semester, and am now embarking on the second semester. After that will come the exercises and deeper study using the excellent (and voluminous) script. For all the academic reading I’m doing, I need a counterpoint. So after months in a city with mediocre book stores, and after finding that my favorite book store in Aachen nerfed its sci-fi and fantasy section (a pox on you, Mayersche), I turned to Amazon, who make you wait a few days but at least have heard the word “selection” before. The first book should arrive tomorrow. My shopping spree netted Lem’s “The Undefeatable”, Murakami’s “The Wild Sheep Chase” (yes, it’s a book about some people chasing a sheep), Kaku’s “Einstein’s Cosmos” (I felt interested in learning a little bit more about relativity, but didn’t feel like dealing with the math), and Dennett’s “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.” The last one obviously deals with evolution, or rather the fall-out of the concept. The actual biological theory is not so much focus of the book as the political and philosophical waves it has caused. I’ll write more about these books as I read them.

Side Trip to Oranje

This is my first post from Germany, since I've been home for six hours now. Six hours, you may think? Weren't I supposed to arrive yesterday? Yes, but the operative word is "supposed," as common in such statements.

The cause of my downfall was my underestimation of SAS; I thought that a 45-minute inland flight shouldn't be more than maybe 20 minutes late. SAS topped this figure by a generous 45 minutes, causes me to be 65 minutes late in Oslo, and thus miss the connecting flight to Germany, which was perfectly on time. I probably could have made it if I had abandoned my luggage, but then it would have taken quite a few days to get it back to home. Once stranded at Gardemoen, I first decided to check how far SAS felt responsible. Answer: Under two hours, they don't. Tough luck.
Next step was to get onto another flight to somewhere in Central Europe. Cologne would be perfect, but Düsseldorf or Brussels would do nicely as well. Alas, no seats were to be had that day for under €450, a humongous sum that topped even the estimated cost of a night in Oslo (one of Europe's most expensive cities). By now I phoned my parents to inform them of the trouble and that I was working on a solution. An alternative eventually presented itself: I could go to Amsterdam. KLM offered flights from Oslo in the evening, and my oldest brother lives there with his wife. I phoned to make sure I could crash on their couch, then booked a seat. It was rather more expensive than the Germanwings flight, but you take what you can get.
After an uneventful flight to Amsterdam, I caught the airport train, met my brother and sister-in-law and after some talk got a good night's sleep. Today I spent the morning around the suburb, then boarded a train which two and a half hours later brought me and my luggage to Heerlen, a dutch city close to Aachen (for just 25€, too). My mother picked me up there, and I was finally home.

Lessons learned:
* Always have two hours buffer between flights
* Don't take SAS
* Dutch rail is great
* So are dutch waffels
* Being on the road a day longer won't kill you

I think in the years to come this episode will be fondly remembered; sitting at Gardemoen for seven hours was kind of boring, but the side trip to Amsterdam was a satisfying solution to the dilemma. Once you are in continental Europe, you can somehow get where you want to go.

I have unpacked my suitcases and set up my computer in an upstairs room. For the days ahead, I want to visit friends in Aachen, maybe shake up those guys on the room placement committees for the student dorms I applied to and enjoy a little bit. It's nice to be back home, where stuff is cheap and the hills are small and easily scaled.

M-Day Minus Two

Wednesday is M-day! Pack all you can, sell the rest, throw away what cannot be taken or sold. That’s been my modus operandi for the last two days. I’ve been busy turning my nice cushy room back into a stark, empty box of whiteness. I’ve taken down posters, sold speakers and plants and toolboxes and I am going to sell my sleeping bag (it was very useful, but is too bulky to send home). Meanwhile, my stores of food are diminishing as planned; I barely have any tea left and the remaining spices and instant noodles will find a good home with Tommy. Cooking for using up stuff makes you creative, and I have to say that salmon in satay sauce is much better than I had expected.

I am also sending one last package. I managed to procure a fine box for free by asking nicely at the local book store. It’s currently filled with 19 kg worth of books and textiles and will visit the post office later today. Another thing to do today is to carry all of my remaining entertainment books to the public library and donate them. I’ve read them all anyway, now it’s a good time to make them available to other people. I’m also running my final laundry set of the stay. All in all, for somebody who doesn’t have a detailed plan, I think I’m doing pretty well. Everything is going smoothly; the only thing I could wish for would be some more profit in the sale of my stuff, but the fact that most students have already moved out make it hard to get your item’s worth.

If I had to draw a moral from the cleaning experience of the last days, it would be “I need more shelves” and “not everything is as useful as I at first thought it would be.” I have some stuff that has seen almost no use at all. It’s all small gadgets, but it’s still clutter. I still have pack rat tendencies, and leave stuff lying around. Example: Right now I have lying on my desk top no fewer than 22 items, ranging from post-it notes over a plush elk, over a magnetic toy set to wax ear-plugs and blue tac adhesive. I’ve tried to fight this, but this room has almost zero shelf space (that is not taken up by books or shoes), so the stuff always ends up back on the desk. At the very least, I have most of my stuff at-a-glance. Yeah, that’s probably what I would call this mess if I was in marketing. In other words: I have to clean up.

Expect one more post from Trondheim tomorrow; thereafter, this blog will be reporting from Aachen, the westernmost city of Germany.

MP3 Players That Aren’t

Ever since my cheap no-name MP3 stick decided to die, I've been looking for a somewhat sturdier replacement – spending 20 € more and getting a year more usage out of it seems perfectly fine to me. There are many different kinds of portable MP3 players out there; even if you restrict yourself to flash-based ones with 1 GB memory and below 110 €, you still have many to choose from. So I started looking.

A couple of days ago I thought I had found what I'd been looking for: The Sony Network Walkman. It was relatively cheap, had gotten good reviews for usability and seemed to promise some longevity. Quickly ordered (special offers are your friend), it arrived yesterday. And today I sent the parcel back with a money-back claim. Why? Simple: Because the darn thing is not actually an MP3 player!

As some of you may be aware, Sony is rather obsessed with having its own file formats – formats that nobody else knows or uses. One of these is ATRAC3, an MP3-like music format with DRM added in. The network walkman can [i]only[/i] play ATRAC3. All other files must be converted using the Windows-only software supplied. I guess that makes MP3, WAV and WMA kind of supported files. It does not, however, make the thing an MP3 player, since it [i]can't play MP3s[/i]. Duh!

For somebody like me, who uses Windows only sporadically and wants to replace the music stored on the player rather often, that is inacceptable. So I'm calling in my money back guarantee. When all is said and done, I'm down 5 € for postage, and learned an important lesson about how music players nowadays work. The online store which sold me that thing will get a mean e-mail soon, lambasting it for misadvertising the item.

Apart from that I've been out and about a little bit. My shaver broke, so I acquired a cheap new one. Yesterday, I got a hair cut, and today, I sent three parcels home containing most of my books. A more voluminous package housing excess clothing and the rest of the books will follow soon. I've taken inventory of my food stores, and it seems as if they will last me until leaving day rather precisely. No significant leftovers. Lastly, I've tried selling some of my stuff online, and have had success. My cheap-ass toolbox from the supermarket seems to draw particular interest, somehow. I guess that's because everybody needs a toolbox. I just wonder why some people don't have one.

Preposterous Postal Package Prices

I have just returned from the post office, where I inquired about the cost of sending some of my books and clothes ahead to Germany, since I can hardly fit everything into my two suitcases. The results were hair-rising. Allow me to illustrate my alternatives:

1.) Send big package with Norges Posten
Up to 20 kg
Cost: 450 NOK + m * 20 NOK/kg = ~ 800 NOK per parcel

2.) Send CarryOn package with Norges Posten
Up to 10 kg, but smaller box
Cost: 290 NOK

3.) Send parcel with DHL
Cost for 20 kg: 3600 NOK (!), not including box

4.) Send parcel with UPS
Cost for 20 kg: 900 NOK, not including box

I thought Norges Posten was off their rocker, until I checked UPS and DHL. At this point it looks like I will have to face cost of roughly €150 to get my stuff home. The books are too valuable to consider re-buying them. The optimal path seems to be sending one or two CarryOn packages filled with books and a big package filled with clothing. I’m going to weigh my books to get a general idea of how many packages I’ll need. As for the clothes, they are not much of a problem. The big package offers a lot of space and is priced by weight. Cotton doesn’t weigh a lot.

On a side note: I had my last exam today, an oral examination in quantum chemistry. We got half an hour preparation time and then had to hold a presentation with questions interspersed. The examination was bit of a mess due to a misunderstanding about the actual topic. The fact that the book we used throughout the lecture connected the given topic to completely different subject matter than the professor didn’t really help. Nevertheless, I got a B, which is a good grade. It seems that my self-perception is a little bit too critical. I have this standard about presentations: They should be snappy, fluid and correct. That is, of course, rather difficult to do with 30 min. preparation on a wide subject. However, the two professors listening didn’t seem put out when I got a little bit turned around with the different terms and concepts involved. So all is well in the end, I guess. My academic year in Trondheim is thereby at an end. It wasn’t the most productive or intense year of my study career, but it had a lot of side benefits.

EDIT: Misinformation can be wonderful thing. I checked prices again on posten.no and it seems that the woman got something messed up. A package to Germany costs 200 NOK + m * 10 NOK/kg = ~ 400 NOK. Much better. Size is also generous, with L < 150 cm and L+H+B < 300 cm.