Life

[ThunderPeel2001]

  Orvidos said:

New computer! *Fist pump, white dancing*

And it only cost me a single human child!

Wow, the prices really are coming down these days!

  SpeedyDesiato said:

My to-be Oxford tutor apparently rang my house phone, looking to speak to me about some work I sent her during the interview process. Omfgnotyvm. I only sent it as a ploy for an extra reason to let me in - I didn't want this to actually happen! Ohgod.

What's so bad about them calling? Did you make a lot of stuff up?

[pabosher]

No, it was an anthropology piece I did earlier this year. I was just hoping she'd email me her impressions rather than call. I fear she's read it, hated it, and is seriously considering why on earth she even gave me an offer anyway

[ThunderPeel2001]

  SpeedyDesiato said:

No, it was an anthropology piece I did earlier this year. I was just hoping she'd email me her impressions rather than call. I fear she's read it, hated it, and is seriously considering why on earth she even gave me an offer anyway

Probably not. Lol. Tell us how it ends up.

[Asembo]

Just came back today from my two week vacation in the United States and I'm just going to say that travelling in late December is a mess. Flight got delayed for three days and I almost had to spend the christmas day at an airport in Germany. Travel problems aside the trip was great, got to see some family members, spent some time in Miami and visited Disney World.

Glad to be back, though. I'm exhausted and I can finally get decent amount of sleep.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Where did you go?

[Kolzig]

Super excited right now. Yesterday was national holiday so spent most of the day deciding about my future phone and decided to get the one I was talking about earlier.

Should arrive next tuesday or wednesday! Woot! Hello Android world!

[Hermie]

  Kolzig said:

Super excited right now. Yesterday was national holiday so spent most of the day deciding about my future phone and decided to get the one I was talking about earlier.

Should arrive next tuesday or wednesday! Woot! Hello Android world!

My girlfriend has been looking at the ZTE Blade too, would love to hear your feedback on it.

[Asembo]

  ThunderPeel2001 said:

Where did you go?

Other than that one day in Orlando, I spent most of my time in New Orleans and Miami. The latter had a great weather, even on the new years eve.

[pabosher]

  ThunderPeel2001 said:

Probably not. Lol. Tell us how it ends up.

It wasn't so bad in the end. She just suggested a couple of stylistic points about my essay writing, although there was one ridiculously awkward moment.

Her: "Really, I wanted to call just so that I could hear your voice."

Me: (Oh shit wtf this is strange and awkward) ...

Her: You know, after you got an offer.

Me: Oh yes! Thank you so much! etc.

Haha, looking back on it makes me laugh.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Wow... embarrassing! That's such an odd thing to say... I mean, she wasn't breaking the news to you in that phone call. You already knew. Weird!

Edited January 8, 2011 by ThunderPeel2001

[Patters]

I've been feeling fairly down m the past few weeks, though I'm fairly sure it's mostly gone. Mostly because of a girl. Last night probably helped the most (thanks Nachimir). I've got exams coming up in the next couple of weeks though I'm fairly confident with the material .

Idle thumbs has got me through a lot in the past few years so i think i owe you guys a massive thank you. A bunch of cool things have happened to me through you guys.

[/Emo]

[vimes]

Back from a monster of a 15 days, 7 city, South to North train-trip in Japan. Except from Tokyo everything was very great due to the sightseeing, hicking, and meeting strange/awesome people in the guesthouse and backpackers.

Kyoto, Hiroshima and the region around Sendai were the highlights with some quasi literal ming blowing moments when stumbling upon the Todai-ji Temple in Nara, the Shukkei-en garden in Hiroshima and the succession of the Gion district, the trail of Temples, Shrines and nice neighborouds leading to Fushimi_Inari-taisha in the east part of Kyoto. If you plan to go in those cities do not get any info about these in advance to let those surprise you even more.

I finished my trip with a skiing day in Teine - 30 minutes from Sapporo in Hokkaido, a small station that features a ferries wheel and a rollercoaster halfway to the top (close in winter, but still ) as well as a view of the ocean when you go down the highest part of the resort. Very kickass and kind of cheap. I started at 9 AM and stopped 6 PM ... 2 hours later I was on a plane back to Singapore. Xtreeeeeeeeeeeme!

The whole thing put me in the mood to wish a MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR to the thumb community and meaning it

[Kolzig]

Cool, happy to hear you enjoyed Japan!

Next on my list there is hopefully to see Sapporo and Okinawa, the complete north and south opposites of that awesome island nation.

[Nachimir]

  Patters said:

I've been feeling fairly down m the past few weeks, though I'm fairly sure it's mostly gone. Mostly because of a girl. Last night probably helped the most (thanks Nachimir). I've got exams coming up in the next couple of weeks though I'm fairly confident with the material .

Glad it helped. It's always fun playing board games with you, and having people come to visit Gambling Lambs makes it feel less cliquey

Good luck and/or a favourable set of deterministic factors with the exams.

[Roderick]

Oh wow, that does sound super extreme, Vimes! Sounds like a god damned James Bond movie; skiing right into the airport.

[keibo]

  vimes said:

Back from a monster of a 15 days, 7 city, South to North train-trip in Japan. Except from Tokyo everything was very great due to the sightseeing, hicking, and meeting strange/awesome people in the guesthouse and backpackers.

Kyoto, Hiroshima and the region around Sendai were the highlights with some quasi literal ming blowing moments when stumbling upon the Todai-ji Temple in Nara, the Shukkei-en garden in Hiroshima and the succession of the Gion district, the trail of Temples, Shrines and nice neighborouds leading to Fushimi_Inari-taisha in the east part of Kyoto. If you plan to go in those cities do not get any info about these in advance to let those surprise you even more.

I finished my trip with a skiing day in Teine - 30 minutes from Sapporo in Hokkaido, a small station that features a ferries wheel and a rollercoaster halfway to the top (close in winter, but still ) as well as a view of the ocean when you go down the highest part of the resort. Very kickass and kind of cheap. I started at 9 AM and stopped 6 PM ... 2 hours later I was on a plane back to Singapore. Xtreeeeeeeeeeeme!

The whole thing put me in the mood to wish a MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR to the thumb community and meaning it

That's pretty damn awesome! I went over to Japan as part of my honeymoon, when I got married this year. Unfortunately I was only there for 6 days which we ended up having 3 days in Tokyo for some shopping and then going to Kyoto for the next 3 days for sight seeing; unfortunately 3 days just isn't enough! I was blown away by the sights and overall culture over there. Japan seem to have the friendliest people ever!

My next task will be to convince my wife to go again to see more of the country...

This year though I'm going to USA during summer; going to spend 5 days in New York, 3 days in Orlando and going on a 1 week Caribbean cruise. I'm really looking forward to it

[Orv]

So I don't know how, but it seems my email account has been hi-jacked. :(:(:(:(:(:(:(

[MrHoatzin]

Interesting article about the collapse of higher learning in Britain (precipitated by good ole Maggie Thatcher) and, later in the article, in the US: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/grim-threat-british-universities/

There is a lot of talk about Oxford in this thread, although I could've as well posted this in the lectures thread as it neatly illustrates the collapse of the management model of running things in cerebral/creative environments.

TL;DR, corporate/capitalist dogma is digesting the western world.

[Thompson]

So Queensland is flooded, there are 8 confirmed deaths and 72 people missing. Millions of dollars of damage has been done, towns are under meters of water and there is more rain coming. The water is heading south towards Brisbane where the outer suburbs are expected to be flooded by water being let out of dams that are already overflowing.

Meanwhile, near Perth a huge bushfire is burning totally out of control.

Luckily both of those things are on opposite parts of Australia and both fairly far from me, although depending on how far south that water from Queensland makes it we might get some rivers flooding down here. For all of December we were flooded ourselves, somehow Australia has become the flood capital of the world.

Update:

Now 9 deaths confirmed, and expected to rise. The flooding is supposed to hit 6500 homes in Brisbane and it's now reaching NSW, plus Victoria (Where I live) is now expected to get flooding independent of the Queensland floods.

In short: Water, water everywhere.

Edited January 11, 2011 by Thompson

[Snooglebum]

But... but... but according to the perceptions of ignorant Americans, it's all one big desert! What is this!?

In all seriousness, though, that kind of sucks.

[pabosher]

  Thompson said:

So Queensland is flooded, there are 8 confirmed deaths and 72 people missing. Millions of dollars of damage has been done, towns are under meters of water and there is more rain coming. The water is heading south towards Brisbane where the outer suburbs are expected to be flooded by water being let out of dams that are already overflowing.

Meanwhile, near Perth a huge bushfire is burning totally out of control.

Luckily both of those things are on opposite parts of Australia and both fairly far from me, although depending on how far south that water from Queensland makes it we might get some rivers flooding down here. For all of December we were flooded ourselves, somehow Australia has become the flood capital of the world.

Update:

Now 9 deaths confirmed, and expected to rise. The flooding is supposed to hit 6500 homes in Brisbane and it's now reaching NSW, plus Victoria (Where I live) is now expected to get flooding independent of the Queensland floods.

In short: Water, water everywhere.

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

That's a damn shame about the flooding. Unfortunately, you quoted my favourite piece of literature, so I was distracted.

[Thompson]

Heh, I wondered if someone would finish the quote. Well done sir.

Hydrologists are basically giving up on predicting the floods at this point, since the last press conference that 6500 homes figure has gone up to 9000. Time will tell.

[Nappi]

Erm.. I just got an email from a professor that was impressed by my exam answer and wants to meet me to talk about my plans. I have a feeling that he might offer me a job as a research assistant or something which would be great if I wasn't already a research assistant and enjoying my job quite a bit. I don't think I'll be quitting now that I'm just getting hang of it.

Still, I guess it can't hurt to meet him. Who knows, maybe I'd do my masters in his group in a year anyway. In that case, I just need to hope he still remembers me next year.

These kind of things make me feel somewhat awkward although they clearly shouldn't.

[Wubbles]

Speaking of research, I'll be starting my experiments for a study I'm conducting soon, which is exciting. Analysis of Logical Discordance in Deaf Individuals.

[Kolzig]

  Hermie said:

My girlfriend has been looking at the ZTE Blade too, would love to hear your feedback on it.

I have used it for less than a day and I'm totally giving thumbs up for this phone. At least mine works perfectly and I'm loving the Android OS. Can't wait for the 2.2. official version to come up in April, the operator said it would come around at that time at least to Finland.

Looks like I'm never going back to Nokia now.