Bernie on Tour

Most important link ever!!!!

2007-05-10T15:16:00.000-07:00

Hi the following link is to a site of a friend of Nestor's. He needs you to follow the link to help him win a contest... so just do it (-Nike ;))

http://www.habitaquo.net/

Skiing

2007-03-13T02:24:00.000-07:00

Hi again....

Here are three pics from our latest skiing trip to Styria (Reiteralm)

Cheers...

University Ball

2007-01-26T18:36:00.000-08:00

Last Friday (19th of January) there was our University's ball taking place in the "Brucknerhaus". Since I've already heard some complaints about me not publishing some pictures - I won't let you wait any longer ;)

Unfortunately I am still not that familiar with my camera - so the faces look very pale in most of the photos... Assuming that all girls are (at least a bit) vain *gg* I will only show the photos where this is not the case ;)

Happy new year

2007-01-03T08:31:00.000-08:00

Yes I know I should have done this a little earlier... but now there is time to wish you all the best for this year!!!
Yesterday I have already talked to Nestor about habits to celebrate the new year. He told me about the "doce uvas" (12 grapes) in Spain where you have to eat one grape at each stroke of the clock at midnight.
In Austria some people heat up a soft metal (lead) until it melts and then poor it into cold water - they believe that the shape of the metal then tells them something about their future within the next year.
Well - that was not what we did - but we did have good fun ;)
Cheers

... most responsible job: cooking "punsch" (red wine, rum, sugar, oranges, spices) ...

... brothers??? ...

... sisters??? ...

... And finally ...

Yes - there is snow in Austria

2007-01-03T08:12:00.000-08:00

Since Audrey-Laure told me that there is still no good snow in France I consider it to be my responsibility to tell you all: Yes - there is enough snow in Austria for skiing. And to proove it there are some fotos of the 30th of December (2006) where I went to Flachau (nice skiing area in the middle auf Austria) with some friends.
And - as U can C - there was still some time for partying afterwards ;)

... top of the mountain ...

... already dark - guess we spent too long in the skihut ...

... in another skihut at the bottom of the slope ...

... ;) ...

Beer festival

2006-12-10T13:35:00.000-08:00

Can all the guys who were in Oxford with me remember the Beer Festival in the Turf Tavern? Well - yesterday we organised something similar ;) We bought some different kinds of beer and invited some of our friends to taste them. And afterwards we went out, of course *gg* Here are the pics:

Farmer looking for wife

2006-12-01T13:19:00.000-08:00

"Farmer looking for wife" is the title of an Austrian TV-Show. It is kinda datin' show where farmers can try to find a girl, the love and best luck for the rest of their life while anybody can watch them ;)

Well - but on the other side it is the name of our volleyball-team that will compete at our unis Xmas-tournament. In order to complete the joke I'm proposing the clothes in the following pictures as our official team-dress. (Btw. the fotos are taken from our show-dance group. We have been doing a funny dance in these outfits at carneval balls)

Gis-Tour

2006-11-25T06:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Martin and I went on a little Mountainbike-Trip to the "Gis" (Hill *gg* near Linz) again. Here are some photographs. Take a closer look at the breaks of my rear tyre and you will be able to imagine the current conditions here in Linz...

Volleyball

2006-11-21T06:43:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody

- well this post has nothing in common with the whole history of this blog. It is more or less a workaround to publish the following two photographs...

The bunch of guys including me was going to Innsbruck to take part in a volleyball competition amongst all Austrian universities. Although winning the tournament was not exactly what we did down there - it was still great fun ;) You can take the fact that we are now thinking of playing basketball - just to take part in a similar cometition in spring - as a proof for us enjoying the weekend.

cheers

Take me home Cowley-road....

2006-02-19T14:06:00.000-08:00

Well - in Oxford there is a street called Cowley Road. And sometimes after goin out it happens that people on the bus start to sing "Take me home - Cowley Road..." Even about 40 year old women!!!

Quite funny indeed - i guess i will not see this back at home

Back again

2006-02-15T05:20:00.000-08:00

Well - I have already been here some days but it took me some time find an idle moment to post this entry. I came back to Oxford in order to finish a project I have started by the end of the last semester. I kept working on it at home and now I hope that I can finish within the next few days.

Besids that there is not much to tell. I've just been meeting friends, doing a little sight-seeing again and hanging around in front of the computer....

BBC: "Massive blaze rages at oil depot"

2005-12-11T12:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we went to London once again. Christina - Igor's girlfriend - showed us around. Since she had already been to London to work as an Au Pair she is kinda local. She showed us a marked near Notting Hill Gate and another one in Camden Town. Camden market is a very intersting place with very interesting people. They've got shops with really crazy punk-clothes as well gothic-stuff but decent or even old-fashioned things as well. But the best thing is that they had mulled wine ("Glühwein") as well. One thing that we are missing here in Oxford. ;-)

We left London between 11 and 12 pm but if we had stayed longer we would have seen lots of black smoke above us. In the morning some tanks exploded at a fuel depot in the very north of London. Althoug more than 100 firefigthers are at the place, they cannot do much. The fire is still burning and might even burn another day.

In the pictures above you can see the smoke and the area where it has effused.

Sleeping lecturer + Countdown

2005-12-06T07:08:00.000-08:00

There are only a few days left until the end of this semester. This week we have to hand in all the assignments. I have already demonstrated the outcome of two of them. Yesterday it was "Systems programming" where Jakob and I demonstrated the little webserver we had to implement (thx to Jakob for doing most of the work!) and today I presented my agent that automatically explores the world of a comuter-game. I think my agent is really good 'cause it explores the whole world without getting stuck or collapsing because of any error. It even deals with lots of special exceptions in a reasonable way.

Anyway - Deep was the first of us two to do the presentation. While he explained all the things like how it works and how he implemented it the lecturer who had to assess us seemed to fall asleep every few seconds. When I did the presentation he obviously spent more efford on staying awake than on listening to what I explained as well. I think this is a perfect example of how lecturers at uni encourage their student to do their courseworks in a proper way.

Since there are only very few days left for us to stay here Deep and I have now a countdown on our blogs (thx to deep for the JavaScript-code).

Weekend @ host-family's in Wales

2005-12-05T11:05:00.001-08:00

I spent the weekend at a host-family's in Wrexham (Wales). I went there because the university pays for the accomodation at the host family's. So the only thing I had to pay during the whole weekend was the transfer from Oxford to Wrexham and back home. My hosts were a retired teacher and a retired draftsman. They had two son who are a little older than me (but I didn't meet one them 'cause they were on trips themselves).

They were very keen on showing me the country - so we drove up an down loads of hills, following narrow and steep, twisting and turning roads for miles without seeing anyone else => They told me that in Wales there are more sheep than people and it's indeed not hard to believe.

The best thing happend on my way home: There was a rail-replacement service since the did some maintenance-work on the track. So insted of changing trains once in Birmingham I had to change three times (train => bus => train => another train). Not that much of an excitement, isn't is. But if got really funny when our bus broke down in the middle of nowhere. First of all I thought the driver was drunken because he killed the engine more than five times within half a mile. But then it became obvious that there was something else wrong. However, the organised anouther bus that took us to the next station,....finally....

Friday afternoon in Birmingham

2005-12-05T10:50:00.001-08:00

Last Friday afternoon I went to Birmingham. (I was on my trip to Wales and stopped there for a few hours) Although it was raining I had a walk through the city and I discovered a very surprising circumstance: They had a german xmas-market. You could get everything - no only all the decoration-stuff, but also "glühwein" and "currywurst".

The rest of Birmingham is not really interesting. There is a huge shopping center (calld Bull Ring) above the railway station - but that's it.

PS: I also visited the cathedral of Birmingham. They have got some nice and colorful windows there. - I hope my parents are proud of me ;-)

New fridge and first snow?

2005-11-29T14:39:00.000-08:00

Today we've got a new fridge because our old one refused to do its job any longer. The new one is bigger! I've never thought that I might be that happy because of a new fridge. But I think everyone who has ever shared a fridge amongst six people knows the reason. Let's see how long this feeling lasts. I'm afraid everyone will just buy more stuff and in a few days it will be the same mess as it has been before ;-(

So it seems like we've got more ice in our kitchen than outside. In Scottland and Wales there is lots of snow - and it seems like they guys up there are not used to driving their cars when there is snow ;-) But down here in Oxford there is absolutely nothing. Some guys told me about some snow yesterday. I actually didn't see any...

Igor + Christina visiting Oxford

2005-11-27T15:54:00.000-08:00

Today our friend Igor (another student from Linz) and his girlfriend Christina were visiting us. We went to the city centre with them in order to show them some of the most famous buildings in Oxford. Afterwards we went to our flat and had dinner together. After having one or two glasses of red wine it turned out to become quite a nice evening. We really enjoyed ourselves - but as a matter of privacy I won't reviel anything about the things we were talking about. I thing some guys (Jakob?) will prefer some details not to be mentioned ;-)

cheers

@igor+christina: I'm really looking forward to seeing you in London or finally at "Christkindlmarkt".

Warwick Castle + Stratford upon Avon

2005-11-26T13:56:00.000-08:00

Today we went on a trip to Warwick Castle and to Stratford upon Avon where Shakespeare was born. This means that we got up at a time where every reasonable human being is still asleep (7:00 on a Saturday!!!). A few hours later (10:00am) we arrived at Warwick Castle after hearing some historical facts about it on the bus. It was around Warwick where the English finally managed to retain the Vikings from capturing the south of England. Inside the castle we could see loads of waxworks by Madame Tussauds that showed some aspects of life in the middle ages. "Some aspects" because they had nice figures of the Churchill family and soldiers preparing for battles on the one hand, but on the other hand there were no figures in the dungeon or the torture chamber.

After freezing for 3 hours (if finally got f***in' cold in England as well) we got onto the worm bus again and went on to Stratford upon Avon. I don't really like all these typical "tourist-photos" but I've included one to proove that we do have visited the house where Shakespear was born in 1564. (I hope my parents will be proud of my cultural engagement ;-))

It was in Stratford as well where we spotted the "Red onion marmelade" you can see in the picture. I looked it up on the Internet thinking that "red onion" is the special name for something at least slightly different from onion. But they indeed seem to have marmelade with onion and vinigar - a fact that (again) prooves that god must have overlooked the English when he gave the sense of tast to human beings ;-)

So after all it was quite a nice trip that finally lead us to our favourite pub in the city centre.

cheers

Trip to Reading

2005-11-20T13:28:00.000-08:00

Today I went to Reading. Since I was offered to go there I was interested in what the Uni there looks like. And I have to admit that I´ve been impressed. Whereas in Oxford all the students and buildings are spread over the whole city the Uni in Reading looks like a little village on its own. There are lots of signposts that show where the buildings for the different subjects are. And they offer many of them! (in the photo you can see the computer science building)

But when I went there I was confirmed in my opinion that the English go mad as soon as regulations are concerned: I went to Reading by train. And when I wanted to go off the train the doors did not open. After a few minutes the "train-manager" - as he called himself - told us, that the doors won´t open at all. WHY? Because the train had 9 carriages and the platform where it was standing was only long enough for 6 or 7. So instead of just opening all those doors that where accessable via the platform they wanted to move the train to anoterh platform!!! But after about 10 or even 15 minutes they realised that there was no other platform available due to regular traffic. So they finally did the only reasonable thing an opened all the doors except those of the last two carriages. So we were finally released ;-)

cheers

2005-11-19T06:45:00.000-08:00

It´s high time to post some new again. But I`m afraid there is not very much to tell. On Wednesday we went to Fobar once more. Fobar is one of the two students' parties that take place every week (The second one is every Saturday).

On Friday I had to give a short presentation in my engish class and Iam very glad that this is done. Because now there is only very little work todoy within the next three weeks. Well and after this three weeks there are some exams but I guess they won´t be that hard.

Yesterday in the evening we were at Bubbly's again. This is an arabic style cocktail bar. A guy from our english class who is from Jemen told us about it and it seems like this may become the regular place to go out for the people from this class.

I heard that there is already some snow in Austria. Here we had frost the last two nights - but there are still all the leaves on the trees so it doesn´t look like winter at all. We have talked to the enlish guys about their weather as well. We came to the conclusion that due to the oceanic climate in Britain the winter will be warmer than in Austria. I wonder if there will be any snow as long as I´m here.

Busy days again

2005-11-14T14:54:00.001-08:00

Today Jakob and I had to hand in the design paper for an addon to an existion open source project. The task is to implemente a webserver that allows the administrator to remotely view log-files and change configuration files of the existing application (Web-filter: dansguardian).

Since we dindn't start until there was very little time left, we had some quite busiy days now. Yesterday night we finished our paper and handed it in today. So hopefully the mark will be worth the effort ;-)

cheers

Guy Fawkes Day

2005-11-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday it was Guy-Fawkes-Day. It is an English holiday where they celebrate that an attempt to blow up the parliament (and the king) was anticipated.

About 400 years ago - where the English already had their own church (Church of England, where the king/queen is the head of church) Catholics where discriminated against. A group of Catholics wanted to start a kind of revolution. In order to do so, they wanted to blow up the parliament while the king was about to meet the members of parliament there. But they where caught in the basement of the parliament with loads of gunpowder before they could conduct their assassination. After all they were killed themselves and the king was saved.

The holiday is named after Guy Fawkes who was member of this group of revolutionists. It is celebrated by having fireworks and bonefires. There was a very big event in Oxford as well. It was probaly the biggest and longest firswork I´ve ever seen. I think it lasted about 20 minutes and was very well done. Afterwards they had a huge bonefire. And there was even a littl funfair.

Actually we would have had to pay 6 pound for the entrance to the park where this event took place. But we were as lucky as to spot a whole in the fence of the park. So we slipped through the fence and saved some money ;-)

cheers

Halloween party

2005-11-01T04:53:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we went out for some Halloween parties. First we wanted to go to a bar at Parkend´s but it was so crowded there that we moved on to the Purple turtle´s again.

(On the bus a girl was quite sick. Although she really tried hard not to vomit - (and she succeeded longer than we had thought) - she threw up in the middle of the bus. A bus that was so full that the driver, didn´t allow more people to get on it. Nevertheless we saw her heading towards a pub a little later.)

At the Purple turtle´s there were lots of people very nice dressed up for Halloween. But our favourite ones were the Ghost-Busters. Unfortunately we stay too long for me to get up in the next morning in order to attend lectures ;-)
Cheers

Beer festival

2005-10-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went to a very nice pub called "The Turf Tavern". It is well hidden in a tight lane without any signs that would lead to it. They had a beer festival starting that evening where they had exactly 50 different kinds of beer by loads of local breweries. We didn´t know even one of them so we had to choose randomly.

Unfortunately the different kinds of beer where not similar to lager (which is the British equivalent to the beer we have in Austria). The whole bunch of us together had quite a big number of different beer but noone (neither English nor Spanish, French or Austrian guys) liked even one of them.

Fortunately there was some kind of cider available as well ;-)
cheers

Busy days

2005-10-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

It has been quite some days since my last post here. The main reason is that Doris came to visit me. So we spent some days seeing London and Oxford - and not to forget there is Uni as well ;-) (There was an assignment due on Monday)

In London we didn´t only see the well known tourist attractions (except Madame Tussoud`s, where we did not fancy waiting in that hugh q) but also a really large Nike-shop with a very cool design and loads of nice clothes and shoes.

On Tuesday the Queen was visited by the king and queen from Norway (or was it Denmark?). Actually we didn´t see any of those vips (we did not wait in front of Buckingham palace like loads of other people did). But we saw lots of the mounted guards and musicians on their march towards the palace.

So - that´s enough for a while. I´m quite tired (got up at 5:30 today)
c.u.

Gingerbread available...

2005-10-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

If you think Austrians - or Austrian merchandisers - are crazy because they start selling Xmas stuff by November, you have obviously never been to Engand in October!
By start of October we could see signs like "Book your Xmas-party at our place now!" at lots of pubs. Well, if you wanted to spend Xmas at an Austrian ski-hut you would have to book this event much earlier.

But at Tesco´s (large supermarket-chain) they have been starting to sell Xmas-like gingerbread. By mid of October! Ain´t it funny.

;-)

Oxford tour

2005-10-16T17:02:00.000-07:00

There are some impressions from our latest Oxford tour (Saturday):

One month over - a little retrospect

2005-10-16T15:24:00.002-07:00

Time went by very fast - and the first month of my stay here in Oxford has already elapsed. So, what happened so far? There was one week of enrollment and induction. I also met my flatmates and lots of other people. Some of them are now friends of mine but on the other side there might be a punch of guys I wouldn´t remember any more.

Lectures at university started one week after my arrivial - and by now they are part of everydays life. It´s quite easy to keep up because the English that is unsed in my lectures is quite easy to understand.

Normally students here take 4 or 5 modules per semester. I took only 4 in order to keep my weekends free for other activities - escpecially travelling around and seeing the country. I´ve taken a guided Oxford-tour, visited Windsor Castle and been to London. There are lots of other places I want to see. Unfortunately I had to give upmy plan about visiting Scottland, when I recognised, that it takes more that 10 hours to go thers (by train).

It turned out, that we international students kinda stick together. We are now a little group - 3 Austrians (Jakob, Deepak - I count him as an Austrian because he studies at the university of Linz - and me), the 2 French girls from our flat (Audrey-Laure and Nathalie) and Deepak´s flatmate Nestor (from Spain). Sometimes the girls or Nestor bring some more people from their countries.

The only English guy who is with us very often is Dan. He studies film and Japanese. That´s the reason why he knows loads of Japanese students. They are quite funny and all of us enjoy hanging around with them.

I hope you are not already bored by reading this blog. But since you obviously read this post - it can´t be that bad ;-)
cu

Movie night

2005-10-15T05:03:00.000-07:00

Initially we wanted to go to the cinema yesterday night in order to see "Oliver Twist". We were there on time but there was such a hugh q(ueue) that we gave up. British life seems to be quite slow in a certain way. You have to q everywhere. Well, we think it´s quite annoying but the British cope with it. (My flatmates were q-ing for tickets for the student´s parties for more than two hours. And that´s just the tickets! There is another q at the entrance most of the time!)

So we were at the citycentre without seeing any film. We decided on going to the "Purple Turtle" which is a relative cheap students-only bar. There is one area where you can sit and talk or play table-football and at the back there is louder music an a dancefloor. So they´ve got something for everyone.

When we went home we met Dan in the company of some - of course - Japanese. He invited us to his place to see a film. We decided on a horror-film which turned out to be not that frightening. But since I came home at about 3:30 you can see that it was an enjoyable evening anyway.

cheers

Another week´s over

2005-10-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been far too busy to post anything into my blog for half a week. As you might expect this is not exactly what I´d call the truth. On Monday evening we went to the "International Cafe". It is kinda meeting for international students to come together and meet people from other countries, cultures and ethnic background. Although it is organised by a local (Christian) church you´d hardy recognise this. This week there was a pudding party where we could tast lots of different puddings (Pudding in not this flabby thing made of milk and some powder that we refer to as "Pudding" in german!) Next week the theme is "Harvest celebration" which sounds a little bit religious. But there will be different homemade soups to taste...

If you know that I´m not that keen on cooking, you might expect that food for free is the only reason that keeps me going there. But is quite a lot of fun getting into contact with people from all over the world - like Japanese, Taiwan, Jemen, Kenia, and other European countries like Spain, Poland or Czech - not for forget about Deepak who actually comes from Nepal.

The rest of the week was more or less everydays life: Going to university, doing some coursework (coding) or excercising (running).

We are thinking of going to London on Sunday. So there won´t be that much of going out on Saturday. This again meens that today we might stay out a little longer ;-)

Hope all of you will enjoy the weekend
cheers

Bakk. finished

2005-10-10T14:49:00.000-07:00

From now on I´ve officially got the academical degree "Bakkalaureus der technischen Wissenschaften". In English you would call it Bachelor of Science (BSc). Thanks very much to my brother Wolfram who collected all the certificates from the students administration at home! Thanks very much to my parents as well for giving me the possibility of going to university!
Thanks a lot to my sister too for her great mental support!!!

Trip to London

2005-10-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

Today six of us went on a one-day trip to London. We did get up quite early - compared to times where student usually get up voluntarily ;-) So we arrived near Victoria Station at about 10:45. It was early enough to watch to change of the guards at Buckingham Palace at 11 o´clock. Well there were thousands of people but it wasn´t as amazing as we expected it to be after seeing all thoses guys waiting there in order to watch it.

Afterwards we went to see the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, Trafalgar Square, Picadilly Circus, China Town (Soho), Tower Bridge and the London Tower (from outside) and an exhibition of landscape photgraphs. After going to all those places it was already dark and so we could get some impressions of London at night.

Actually we were too tired to go out in London as well. And I´m quite tired now as well, so don´t complain about any typos or other mistakes in this post...

The couple of photos will show you that the weather wasn´t that nice - but at least it didn´t rain most of the time.

Everyday life in our hall / at uni

2005-10-07T11:38:00.000-07:00

Well - doday is the end of so called week 2. By now all assignments to courses and modules have to be fixed. That means if you are singed up for a module and you finally decide not to go there it is too late now - you will get a mark anyway - either a positive or a negative one.

In other words everyday life has just started. Induction, enrollment and module introductions are finnished. So it´s all about attending lectures, doing course work, and facing new difficulties. But this time they do not only concern us exchange students but the whole lot of Computer- and Math-related students: The server went down. So practically speaking all the intranet-pages where we could download lecture handouts, assignment sheets, and other files we need to fulfill our tasks are gone. Believing in rumours there has been some kinda hacker attack.

Next to these troubles we are facing first problems concerning life in a shared flat. So due to different timetables, "going out"-habits and general behaviour it´s not always easy to make everyone happy. Especially when half of the people wants to have fun at the same time where the others want to sleep. Or someone does not understand that he has to wash up his stuff immediatley afer cooking/eating in order to not blockade the whole kitchen...

2005-10-05T03:12:00.000-07:00

Well - some days ago I told you that they have lost our assignment form which is used to subscribe for modules. So we had to fill out a single form for each module, make each module leader sign it, and finally hand all those forms in at the students administration, where - of course - you´ll find yourself stuck in a huge queue.

Now that I have done this for almost all of my modules... surprise, surprise... the initial form suddenly appeared, due to some kinda magic or any other unbelievable phenomenon.

Except of this chaotic procedure uni seems to be quite ok. Although it is too school-like for my taste. (Since the students here take only 4 or 5 modules per semester there is not that much room for individual choice. The freshers do even get a fixed timetable in their first semester, where they can only change minor details. And you are forced to finish your bachelor within 3 years, or 4 years if you are only part time student. So you are not as flexible as we are used to be.)
But some of our course work we will have to do until end of semester have turned out to be very interesting. So I´m really anxious to getting more details within the next weeks.

cheers

Getting used to uni-related vocabulary

2005-10-03T15:37:00.000-07:00

Today I realised that there are situations where it is not enough to know the German translation of English words. I supposed "Course work" and "Practical work" to be two equivalent terms describing one thing. They handed out one assignment-sheet during the lecture and I thought it was the "practical work" we had to do in order to pass the "course".

Today about two hours before deadline Jakob and I readlised that there was a second assignment - namely the "Course work" - we had to download via internet and hand in as well. Since we had only done the "Practical work" we were in some troubles. Other students told us that it took them several hours to fulfill the tasks. Since Jakob is quite fast at typing we managed to finish in time. (We were lucky that the lecturer did not complain about the hectical typing during her lesson ;-))

Windsor Castle

2005-10-02T10:48:00.000-07:00

Today Deepak, Jakob and I went on a trip to see Windsor Castle. It is a huge castel about one hour per train away from Oxford. The Queen is said to stay there every April and June - we apparently did not see her, but we didn´t miss her either. The castle itselve was quite impressive. The first buildings can be dated back to 1078. Inside the castles we could see some paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Holbein as well as loads of old weapons, furniture, and china.

Afterwards we went to see Eton-College. It is one of England´s most famous and respected colleges.

Hamlet

2005-10-01T10:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday five of us went to the theatre in order to see Hamlet by - of course - this strange guy called Shakespeare. I´m saying "strange" because that is exactly what his language was like. The english guy who was with us said that when he saw Hamlet for his first time even he didn´t understand all of it. I understood enough to get the plot but don´t expect me to remember that much of the mono-/dialogs - except(of course) "2 B or not 2 B???".

Afterwards the two french girls from our flat taught us a card-game they use to play at home. It was not really challanging (they told us afterwards that it´s normally played by little children) but we had good fun anyway. So you can see we are doing some kinda cultural interchange (Jakob cooked "Gulasch" for all of us - although it is not an original Austrian dish).

cheers

Some more lectures

2005-10-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

Additional to the two modules I've already described, there are two more of them. The first one is Computer Vision. It seems to be quite interesting. It's about learning a computer percieving opject in its environment by analysing pictures of this environment. Therefore we have to write some MatLab-Scrips.
The last module I´m taking is about English language. It´s called Academical Listening and Speeking. As far as I know what it´s all about, we are supposed to hold some speeches in English an write summarys of one speech by another student. Not that intersting - but I hope it will help me improving my English.

We also me another Austrian guy who has been studying in Reading. He came for a visit in order to show Oxford to a german friend of his. So we had a little walk around the city centre and then - however - ended up in some pub. Here are some impressions:

Some more stumbling stones

2005-09-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-09-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-25T14:47:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-23T08:25:00.000-07:00

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 ;-)