perspective, birds, cats...and latex

it was one week ago that my plane landed in iceland, give or take 2 hours. i like it here. slowly i’m getting used to the place. i’m not sure yet, maybe it’s too early to judge, but i think i might have found here the place i’ve been looking for in france. i’ll just write some more impressions, nothing coherent, just some thoughts.

one striking feature here is the landscape. due to the lack of tall buildings and the relative flatness of the terrain (at least in my side of town) you can always see the horizon far, far away; and somehow the clouds are so low you have the impression of being closer to the sky. it’s really nice here when the sky is clear (and even when it’s cloudy it still seems majestic). and the buildings and trees seem to be scattered in a random fashion, unlike in grenoble, in neatly engineered rows; this makes the landscape seem wild and primordial.

the day before yesterday i saw a bird flying upside down. i’ve always believed this to be impossible. there were actually two of them, crows or ravens as much as i can tell. and one was chasing (courting?) the other. when it would get above the other this latter one would always do a corkscrew maneuver, several times in a row. stupid drunken icelandic birds.

the only animals i’ve seen apart from birds are cats. i was told there are quite a few stray cats in reykjavik. well, it’s still better than stray dogs. especially the ones that live in bucharest and feed on japanese businessmen. i like cats. i like cat-girls even better. hmmm. do you think if i’d take in a stray cat she might turn into a cat-girl like it happened in true love?

i’ve also started to learn to use latex (got myself some documentation too from the prof). i think it’s just like linux: easy to use, difficult to master. i only wish i had taken advantage of pete and sanyi and learn some tricks from them while i had the chance.

i’ll post some nice pics of reykjavic soon…tomorrow maybe.

random thoughts...

i’ve been here for a few days now and i’m slowly getting acquainted with this place and the people. there was some mix-up, and the i had to move to another room cause there’s somebody housed already in the previous one. my new room looks a bit basementish (i suppose it’s because it is in the basement). in the other room i had two huge windows and a balcony, here i only have one small window but the wireless connection is much better (it was useless in the other room). so i’ve basically traded sunlight for internet connection, fair enough (i only have to get a wireless adaptor now).

at the lab, i already have my desk and a pc. the prof asked me “are you a windows user or a linux guy” and i was like “aaa….windows”. “because we have a pc here for you but i’m not sure if it has win on it, if it doesn’t we’ll just buy you one“ (gao!) he tells me. turned out the computer was a brand new out-of-the-box dell optiplex 620 (2,8ghz/1gb/80gb) – oishii.

i entered yesterday the cleanroom for the first time. pretty neat. i felt strange. did you notice that in any movie/anime where a science facility gets to be overtaken by armed forces, there are always those unarmed scientists in clean environment suits (no name, no face) who are shot down by a machinegun or a flamethrower half a second after they scream “no please..” (or even sooner sometimes). technicians always carry sidearms or crowbars, but scientists-in-fancy-suits are fully expandable and die in the lamest most useless possible way. well that’s what it felt like :D of course, gordon freeman is an exception to the rule cause he is a theoretical physicist, much like sanyi and szabi.

yesterday's post today

well, i’ve arrived safely to iceland. the trip was mostly pleasant and uneventful if i don’t count all the explanations i had to give at the borders (yep, it’s difficult to travel with a romanian passport – we’ll see if anything will change after we enter the eu).

anyway, first impressions. iceland is expensive. and i don’t mean, my that’s expensive, i mean holy fucking shit mother of god expensive. well 6 eggs, 1 liter of milk, oil, cup ramen and some other things i could get for less than 8 eur in france here i paid 15+ eur for. (shocking - gao gao!). the fee for a monthly pass on public transportation costs 60 eur (in france it was 25). gao !!

second, the tap water does seem to have a subtle mineral taste, but not as bad as the one at borsec. i’ll have to get used to it anyway since i won’t be able to afford any juice – i wanted to drop that habit anyway.

the people seem nice and helpful, and most of them speak english to a certain degree. it’s not cold or dark at all, at least for now. but i was told that temperatures don’t really drop below -7c (so much for the superconductors at room temperature :p )

i’ll write some more about the lab and the ppl in my next post.

take care and don’t misbehave

also, my deepest thanks to everybody who cheered for my arrival - it's good to know you're not alone as ai-chan would say (you figure it out)

a new beginning

so, due to peer pressure (pun intended for those who get it) i'm restarting this blog i've just returned from bucharest this morning so this will be a short post as i'm rather tired. i'm flying to reykjavik this friday via berlin. i've found a pic of the plane i'll be taking from berlin, nice. i used to joke about the fact that since it has only two engines, if one should malfunction, it would only be able to fly in circles - for some reason my mom doesn't enjoy these jokes :( anyway, i'm back on the job and i'll post next time on saturday maybe