So last Thursday I had a meeting with the assessors of my first-year work, and I found out that my registration attempt for the PhD should go through with no problems, so that's one thing settled. It doesn't seem to make any difference to my funding status or my actual work schedule, but it's reassuring, since it indicates that the stuff I did ( Read more... )

I've written about the Blindekuh restaurant a couple of times before (a restaurant in Zürich and Basel where you eat in the pitch black, and are served by blind waiters), but I went back this past Saturday with Joe Beals, a friend from Oxford (visiting student) and Cambridge (PhD) who's visiting here for a couple of days. We weren't planning to go ( Read more... )

I was in Salzburg last weekend for my boss's 50th birthday party. The guy, Gerhard Plasonig, is one of the board members of WoodWelding, so he's not my current boss, but I've worked for him before, and I've remained somewhat involved in the WoodWelding projects here, so I garnered an invitation. Unfortunately, Jamie had to leave for the US the ( Read more... )

You're all in trouble now...

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/

My favorite so far: http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/020605/panflute-flowchart.gif

New one every day. Every day!

#1: Jamie's family visited for a week back in July, and the only update I've posted was about her grandfather being lost in the ice palace at the Jungfraujoch station (he was eventually recovered). There's not a whole lot else to report, to be honest - her mother stayed with us, which turned out not to be a fiasco at all - and her grandparents ( Read more... )

#1 - it was Swiss National Day yesterday, commemorating the founding of the Swiss Confederation (there's another offical German name for it), between 3 original cantons in 1291. There are now 26 cantons in Switzerland, (Confederation Helvetica) and that's why the country's abbreviation is "CH". We had the day off of work, but the fireworks and ( Read more... )

Jamie's mother: "Hi, sweetie, we're at the Jungfrau place, but we lost your grandfather in the ice palace."

...

Bored bored bored bored boooooooored ( Read more... )

This seems so much like something that I would have gotten from you guys (Matt in particular) that I had to repost it. However, Matt has really dropped off in terms of supplying weirdness, so I have to get things like this from my brother. Enjoy:http://www.transbuddha.

I had some doubts about my landlady before arriving here, but she's turned out to be absolutely lovely. For instance, I thought, based on my initial phone conversations with her, that she might have a dislike for foreigners, and that she might be meddlesome and/or disapproving of the idea that Jamie is staying with me for 2 1/2 months, and that ( Read more... )