Random Thoughts

So wow, I have been working for over 2 weeks now and I have encountered a programmers worst nightmare: a program that doesn't work for some strange reason. Turns out it's Bill Gates fault ;-) or rather that all those jerks have to stick to their own standards and can never agree on anything. So VinhTuan developed on his mac which is a UNIX system and I tried to run the program on Windows. Lesson learned: trivial little tiny details like line feeds and carriage returns can mess up a program big time. But now the program is running smoothly and I get to enjoy the cool Text Analysis program VinhTuan wrote and add some functionality. So slowly but steadily I am getting used to working and I quite enjoy it.

Also the people in DERI are so far all really nice. On Friday I went to the FAWM (friday after work meeting) and we went to the city (if you can call it that) to a pub. Quite a lot of people had joined because there was a Ph.D to be celebrated. The evening was awesome, I talked to new people and finally got to dance again... Also quite interesting what you learn about the people at work in one evening.

Oh, I have a possibly amusing story for all the non-Irish people out there. So yesterday I went swimming and I have to say I am quite proud that I did 2km in under 1 hour (ehm yeah, it was 59 minutes and 10 seconds, but still, less than 1 hour). Afterwards I thought I could do something a bit more relaxing and go to the sauna. Here I have to explain something for the non-Irish people: the sauna in Ireland is usually located to the side of the swimming pool. So I can tell you that going to the sauna NAKED is unthinkable... It is as if while in the sauna something bad could happen if you do not wear your swimsuit. I still quite can't get over the fact of wearing something in the sauna, just seems completely unnatural and unhealthy to be sweating under a tight swimsuit. Well anyway, so I got over my concerns and went to the sauna. I was there for 20 minutes and during that time there were only guys in the sauna... Like probably around 20 different ones. At one point I was in this quite small sauna with 6 other guys LOL. So maybe after all I was glad for my swimsuit.

What else? My flat mates are going to go away for 2 weeks, so I will have the whole flat to myself. So far I don't really have a clue what to do all by myself, because we do something together nearly every evening. I guess I will be missing them :-) (and in case you read this Simon and Lukasz, I am only KIDDING ;-)). But because I am so smart *laugh* I invited some friends from Dublin to come on the weekend. So far my Swedish friend Ida has said yes and we'll probably rent a car and I will FINALLY get out of Dangan (that is the area I live in and DERI is also there).

Otherwise I have been doing a lot of cooking and baking (made a Dreikoenigskuchen and twice I made Zopf - that is a special type of bread we usually eat on Sunday in Switzerland - from 1kg of flour). Additionally I discovered the joys of a PlayStation3 in the house. It is the most amazing thing to play the same pretty stupid and simple game with your flat mates over and over again: WORMS. Soooo much fun I tell you. Especially because I am the best worm player, Lukasz comes second and we all know who is loosing (and claiming that the other team up against him... *innocent look* no clue where he got that idea from).

I am running out of things to write ;-). So I guess I wish you all a nice week, hope you are all well, wherever you are.

Sara