Some more stumbling stones

As if bureaucracy wasn´t already complicated enough, they´ve lost our module-assignment-forms. Since the last day where this special kind of form can be handed in was last Friday, Jacob and I have now to fill in an extra form for each module we want to take, sign it, make the module leader sign it, make our personal tutor sign it, ... , and finally take it to the students administration. Great effort to undo a mistake that wasn´t even ours. Ain´t it funny?

Lectures started...

Lectures started on Moday and I have already had two of my five modules I want to attend. The first one was "Systems Programming" - which is something like operating-system related C-programming on UNIX. One of the lecturers is the woman in the picture on the left (click it to enlarge). When you see her, you would never expect her to know anything about computers. But in fact she seems to be kinda tough lady - she really tried to scare us by telling us not to underestimate the level and that she has very high fail-rates in her modules (kinda english "Walter Schneider" ;-) for those who are studying Computer Science in Linz). It was a nice try at least! So let´s see what´s comming up...

The second module was "Agent Technology". For those who are not that familiar with Computing: Agents are programmes that percieve their environment and act adequate to this environment in a proactive way. As coursework we are supposed to create an agent that automatically explores a virtual world (like in computer games /eg. ego shooters) and create a map of it. The difficulty is that is should simulate a human beeing and therefore needs to find water and food in the environment. In order to survive and not die because of starvation it needs to to have some kinda intelligent bahaviour. The agent should also be able to communicate with the agents of the other students, that are exploring the same virtual world at the same time, and react to unexpected events.

So that´s enough of uni for today
cheers

NB: They have got cushioned seats in the lecture theatres!!!

Lunch at a local family´s

Today exchange students were given the opportunity to have lunch with a local family. We signed up because it was for free. "We" initially referes to Jakob and me but the two french girls in our flat decided to join us - so it was 4 of us. The "family" turned out to be three 25-year-old girls and the meal was quite nice (= no traditional English dishes).

NB: Deepak has changed his plans and is already here in Oxford as well (instead of arriving in January). So it´s three of us comming from the JKU Linz.

Tomorrow my first lecture is going to be started. I really wonder what they will be like...

cheers

Singning up for moduls

I actually thought that the Austrians love bureaucracy - but the poeple here are even worse. Today I wanted to sing up for my modules - which are partial undergraduate and partial postgraduate modules. Our local tutor told us that this is quit okey - but surprise, surprise... it´s not that easy. As an exchange student I am enrolled at undergradute level. Now I have to enroll as an associate postgraduate student as well. The consequences are that I will have 2 student numbers, 2 studentd ID-cards, 2 websites where can communcate with the module leaders,and so on.

But I think complaining is not exactly the best thing to keep U interested in this blog, so there are another 3 pics for U.

* enrollment
* people who arrived later - queuing for enrollment
* and freshers fair - where this really funny guy tried to make me join the British army ;-)